Creative Approaches to Memory NUBS 3.06
Jul 06, 2023 11:00 - 12:30(Europe/London)
20230706T1100 20230706T1230 Europe/London 6.12. Memory sites / sites for memories NUBS 3.06 MSA Conference Newcastle 2023 conference@memorystudiesassociation.org
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Border Crossings: Mnemonic Transformation between Australia and Japan and its Screen Portrayal
Individual paperCreative Approaches to Memory 00:00 Midnight - 11:00 PM (Europe/London) 2023/07/05 23:00:00 UTC - 2023/07/06 22:00:00 UTC
Australia and Japan were enemies during the Second World War but the years following have been characterised by a growing reconciliation. What mnemonic relationality (Erll 2017) has emerged from this post-war transformation?
This question will be considered by an analysis of the travelling memory-film, Japanese Story (2003 – screened at Cannes). Set in the Australian outback, the film's central encounter between a female Australian geologist and a travelling Japanese businessman reflects how by the turn of the twenty-first century, the relationship between Australia and Japan had reached an economic maturity, one invested in tourism and trade. The film's tropes of hospitality towards visitors, respect for cultural learning, and the embrace of death and grief far from home, also draw on a cultural and relational maturity. Central to understanding this new relationship of reconciliation are two sites in the rural town of Cowra, Australia, regarded as the spiritual home of Japan-Australia friendship.
Cowra is the location of the largest wartime prison escape attempt in 1944, and of the sole officially recognised war cemetery beyond territorial Japan where those who lost their life in the breakout are buried, and of a proximate Japanese Garden and Cultural Centre, sites that offer solemn ceremony and celebratory festivals for pilgrimage and visitation. It is in this aftermath of the breakout - the efforts of generations of the Cowra community in caring for the Japanese graves and in cultural/diplomatic initiatives such as the Garden - that primacy has been given to renewal, and it is this path that informs the film. 
Close scene analysis reveals inter-medial dynamics in the Australia-Japan relationship: the multidirectional movement of memory (Rothberg 2009) across geographic and cultural borders, and through screen montage and gesture (Harbord 2016). The ethical encounter with the Other, explored through the "poetics of relation" (Glissant 1997), and "cinematic acknowledgement" (Cavell 1981), will extend Erll's concept of the travelling memory-film, portraying a transcultural encounter from hesitancy through to acceptance and a hopeful future.
Presenters
DM
Darren Mitchell
Independent Researcher
Creative representations of urban memory: Rethinking the exhibition piece "RengAhenk Ankara" through audience experiences
Individual paperCreative Approaches to Memory 00:00 Midnight - 11:00 PM (Europe/London) 2023/07/05 23:00:00 UTC - 2023/07/06 22:00:00 UTC
"From childhood to youth, the city is always there and the individual's view of the city changes with each encounter (...) The city changes with us, just as we change with the city. Spaces that embody our excitements and hopes such as friendship, love and happiness, on the other hand, can integrate or intersect with our fears, worries and anxieties. While some emotions disappear, some remain the same, and some transform in the city, while contributing to our ever-changing relationship with the city which parallels the turning points/milestones in our lives. What does Ankara offer us in this tangle of emotions that deepen, color and relate as we remember, think and share? How can we read this riot of colors?"
From the exhibition text of RengAhenk Ankara (Col'armony Ankara), 2022
In this paper, we share an exhibition piece that uses individual memories and recreates them in the form of collages, poetry and maps. We investigate how the creative representation of individual memories is experienced by participants who shared their memories and the exhibition audience. The piece was produced for the annual exhibition of the Ankara Chambers of City Planners, in 2022 (13 September - 16 October 2022). The theme of the year was decided as "emotions", thus the exhibition was named as "Duygular Coğrafyası Ankara" (The Geography of Emotions Ankara) exhibition. The exhibition piece, "RengAhenk Ankara" (Col'armony Ankara), was built around the idea of focusing on the memories of childhood and youth within the city. Thus, it aimed to reveal the emotions related to these memories and the city itself, in the tension between the past and the present by using creative representations. It is aimed to establish the narrative of the changing feelings about the city and the emotion brought by the transformation of the city through memory. The exhibition piece was created through a workshop process.
In order to explore childhood and youth memories as well as emotions in the city of Ankara, the workshop team conducted interviews with 15 people who had a childhood in Ankara. Additionally, an online survey was implemented for broader participation. Following the interviews, the shared memories were represented and reproduced through the methods of mapping, found poetry and collage. The results of the survey were shared in the form of an infographic and a poem. The infographic included a blank space that enables the audience to share their own memories and spaces that they associate with certain emotions. 
Now, after the completion of the exhibition, we want to understand how our creative approach is experienced by two audiences: participants who shared their memories and those who visited the exhibition. In the following months, we are planning to conduct focus groups with these two parties. By doing so, we are aiming to discover the possibilities of such a creative approach for understanding entanglements between individual memory and collective memory as well as its relation to the city. During the conference, we will share the results of this study.
*All authors contributed equally to this work.


Presenters Seda Şen
Dr. , Baskent University
Co-Authors
OY
Ozlem Yalcinkaya
Middle East Technical University
CY
Cigdem Yonder
University Of Liège
Creative diasporic memories and intangible cultural heritage
Individual paperCreative Approaches to Memory 00:00 Midnight - 11:00 PM (Europe/London) 2023/07/05 23:00:00 UTC - 2023/07/06 22:00:00 UTC
The role of cultural heritage (both in its tangible and intangible forms) is often the focus of contemporary academic debates around the construction of social and cultural capital. Its impact on the socio, cultural and economic development of a community is indeed fully recognized. For instance, since 2015, culture has become a key pillar of the United Nations framework for the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs): within it, heritage has been acknowledged as a resource that needs to be protected and which can serve both as a driver and as an enabler to reduce social and gender inequalities, sustain communities and foster wellbeing. However, not enough academic consideration has been given to the interdependences and interrelations between cultural heritage, diasporic memories, and their contemporary creative expressions amongst diasporic groups, and in relation to the Creative and Cultural Industries. Hence this paper addresses the need to understand these processes.
The paper focuses on the Sub-Saharan African diaspora based in the UK. It aims to define the contemporary (cultural) mechanisms that African diasporic communities use to remember and recreate their diasporic intangible heritage (understood as a set of traditional knowledge, skills, and practices) in order to reassert their sense of identity and belonging. It also aims to shed light on the ways in which the creative reinventions of African diasporic heritage can contribute to a community's social and economic well-being.
The paper will draw from examples of the African diaspora Cultural and Creative Industries (e.g. including museums; cultural centers; fashion networks; street theatres) primarily based in the UK. I will argue that the intergenerational transmission of intangible cultural heritage contributes to a set of performative and creative memory processes, geared towards identity redefinition, adaptation, and resilience. These processes have the potential to become successful tools for strengthening the social fabric of a community in an inclusive and just way while opening up economic and cultural opportunities for innovation and development, especially in areas and communities that have been historically neglected.
Presenters
AC
Anna Catalani
Associate Professor Of Museum And Heritage Studies, University Of Lincoln
"Site of memory" in Acre, Haifa, Jaffa: Local artistic expression after 1948.
Individual paperCreative Approaches to Memory 00:00 Midnight - 11:00 PM (Europe/London) 2023/07/05 23:00:00 UTC - 2023/07/06 22:00:00 UTC


The paper will focus on port towns as a test case of mixed cities in the 20th and 21st centuries. The critique of space is based on interdisciplinary studies in Memory Studies and Postcolonial Studies and their connection to the creation of Palestinian local artistic expression in these cities.
The paper aims to examine the "Site of memory" in visual culture, focusing on artistic creation, exhibitions and local curative projects in Acre, Haifa, Jaffa by the Palestinian artists: Durar Bacri, Reida Adon, Ahlam Shibli, Farah-Kufer Birim, and Raafat Hattab.
The paper will focus on the ways in which the exhibitions and projects represent the writing of a new artistic history regarding conflict, Violence and Memory. In the context of the artistic activity in the mixed cities, the concept of "memory activism" will be examined as a radical position in contrast to the homogeneous national logic that regulates the division of space in the mixed city.

In the paper, representations of the The Middle East port town will be examined, both as a gate to the East to those entering the port, and as a gate to a cosmopolitan space that is open to Western influences. In the framework of this duality diversity will be examined in a multi-cultural space that included exposure to Muslim, Christian and Jewish cultures; manifestations of journeys and travels in artists' creations, back and forth to the mixed cities after 1948. Critical approaches to Orientalist views will be examined, views which led to isolation of the Arab space within the boundaries of a walled-in, often "old" city or a traditional Middle Eastern Muslim city. Representations of neglect and lack of urban development will also be explored in the context of the mixed city.
Works addressing Nakba representations include Reida Adon's video-art works shot in the Acre port; Durar Bacri's paintings of fishing boats in Acre port; and the "ghost" photographs in Ahlam Shibli's Wadi Salib Project, taken in Haifa. Representations of the liminal settings of the port and the marine environs will be examined, in works by Hanna Farah-Kufer Birim, who address the transformation of the marine environment in Jaffa in recent years. 
Presenters
TB
Tal Ben Zvi
DR, Bezalel Academy
Media Aesthetics of Memory Technique: A Case Study on “BD Louvre”
Individual paperCreative Approaches to Memory 00:00 Midnight - 11:00 PM (Europe/London) 2023/07/05 23:00:00 UTC - 2023/07/06 22:00:00 UTC
The Louvre has been collaborating with independent publisher Futuropolis on the "BD Louvre" project since 2003. The project invites comic artists to freely explore and create within the museum, with their work presented in the form of comic publications. Comic artists from France, Japan, Taiwan, Hong Kong, and other regions have collaborated on this project, leading to the development of comic exhibitions in museums and art galleries. This paper examines Taiyo Matsumoto's Cats of the Louvre as a research case to explore how comics can serve as a multi-sensory memory technique for museums. The story revolves around Henri Lerambert's Les Funérailles de l'Amour (The Funeral of Love, circa 1580), a 16th-century French Renaissance painting. The story follows a group of cats who have lived in the Louvre's interstitial spaces for generations, each with their own unique breed and personality. Among them, a specific white cat possesses the special ability of an "entrant," allowing him to hear the whispers of paintings, leap into them under certain circumstances, converse with the artwork, and even hide within them. However, the paradox is that once one truly enters a painting, one can reside in the painted space but will remain in that state forever, which can be considered a form of death. 
In the latter half of the 20th century, museums began developing innovative exhibition strategies using digital technology. With the pandemic impacting the global economy and cultural activities in 2020, online exhibition models developed through digital technology became essential communication channels. However, from the mediological perspective, while online exhibitions achieve communication benefits, they lack the "transmission" emphasised by mediology. Virtual tours of museums reproduce the museum's interior spatially, allowing viewers to navigate the interior and view exhibits through mouse clicks and on-screen image manipulation. On the other hand, "BD Louvre" represents the museum's experience, rather than focusing on its physical aspects, such as architecture, layout, and overall appearance. "BD Louvre" expands the reader's multi-sensory experience through the narrative method of comics, highlighting the relationship between memory and museums. This approach to multi-sensory engagement is closely related to the inherent characteristics of comics. This research is based on the theories of W.J.T. Mitchell and Natsume Fusanosuke. The theoretical framework will use Mitchell's relational framework of "image/sound/text" in media aesthetics, compared to Fusanosuke's structure of comic representation analysis consisting of the three basic elements of comics: "drawing/panels/language." Through these perspectives, this paper examines how visual (image), sound, and tactile perception are expressed through comics in Cats of the Louvre, and explores how the "BD Louvre" project serves as an artistic form of memory technique.
Presenters
YC
Yinhua Chu
Associate Professor, Natiaonl Taipei University Of Education, Taiwan
Dr.
,
Baskent University
Independent Researcher
DR
,
bezalel academy
Associate Professor of Museum and Heritage Studies
,
University of Lincoln
Associate Professor
,
Natiaonl Taipei University of Education, Taiwan
Research Fellow
,
German Historical Institute Warsaw
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