Questioning Traumatic Heritage: Spaces of Memory in Europe, Argentina, Colombia

Project Information

SPEME

Grant agreement ID: 778044

DOI

10.3030/778044

Project closed

EC signature date 7 November 2017

Start date 1 July 2018

End date 30 April 2024

Funded under

• EXCELLENT SCIENCE - Marie Skłodowska-Curie Actions

Total cost

€ 553 500,00

EU contribution

€ 553 500,00

Coordinated by

ALMA MATER STUDIORUM - UNIVERSITA DI BOLOGNA
Italy

Periodic Reporting for period 2 - SPEME (Questioning Traumatic Heritage: Spaces of Memory in Europe, Argentina, Colombia)

Reporting period: 2020-07-01 to 2024-04-30

Summary of the context and overall objectives of the project

SPEME takes as its specific object of investigation a various array of traumatic heritage sites and spaces of memory in Europe, Argentina and Colombia, such as museums, former detention centers and clandestine camps. It investigates how various traumatic heritages and pasts can be preserved, narrated and transmitted through space, and which kind of innovative actions might both improve knowledge of the past and serve as an opening to actual issues and new social actors. The project builds on international and inter-sectorial networks which make possible transfers of knowledge, both between difficult and contested memories in different historical and geographical contexts (Europe and South America) and between academic researchers, museum curators and professionals stakeholders. SPEME also investigates the complementary competences that cultural institutions promote at fueling powerful knowledge exchanges at the theoretical, methodological and practical levels. Through a rich combination of methodological and theoretical approaches (concept-oriented, object-oriented and user-oriented approaches), SPEME has few precedents in the field of trauma and semiotics, heritage and memory studies and museum studies and offers valuable insights on the dynamics of memory, musealization, appropriation and commodification of traumatic heritages and pasts in the present.
Speme’s overall objectives are:
-To coordinate and implement innovative activities of a network encompassing international and inter-sectoral institutions aimed at examining creative ways through which traumatic heritage and pasts in Europe and South America can be preserved, represented, transformed and transmitted in different spaces and sites of memory.
-To develop smooth, effective and constant transfer of knowledge between academic and non-academic partners and national and international networks
-To advance the current state of the art on memory studies and sites of memory
-To devise guidelines for original and creative activities and practices for the representation and sharing of traumatic heritage including imagining and testing new politics of transmission in actual spaces of memory and the ways in which these spaces foster transnational dialogues and tolerance.

Work performed from the beginning of the project to the end of the period covered by the report and main results achieved so far

The work performed in the project has been following 4 main WP (apart from Managment and Ethics):
- "Politics of Memory in Space. Theory and Methodology", in which we worked extensively on the definition of a shared trans-disciplinary methodology. Moreover, we have been carrying on comparative research on different models of monumentalisation of “difficult heritage” in Italy and the Netherlands, on the one hand, and in Colombia and Argentina, on the other hand. Finally, we have been investigating how heritage and museums can be positively exploited as a tool for informal education. Within this frame, we have organized a first training workshop on “Education through museums” with the participation of experts and professionals of the field.
- "The Value of Cultural Heritage", that comprised several workshops on archives and digital technologies, working especially on a podcast project. We have worked extensively on Heritage, memory and identity in order to better understand the relation between traumatic heritage and cultural systems. We also engaged in fieldwork visiting many traumatic places and memory museums in each of the involved country.
-" Spaces for Reconciliation and Human Rights: Museums and Civil Society", where we have been researching the possible connections between the contemporary “culture of memory” and the discourse of Human rights, in particular in Colombia and Argentina. A special attention has been paid to designing tools for an “active memory” and practices of reconciliation to stimulate an active memory among new generations.

-As for "Dissemination", we realized 4 international conferences:
- “Arte y memoria”, in Argentina, at UBA
- “Procesos de memoria”, in Colombia, at UNAL
- “Historical Trauma and Post-Memory in the Museum”, in Netherlands, at UVA
- the final conference “Questioning Traumatic Heritage: Spaces of memory in Europe, Argentina, Colombia”, in Italy, at UNIBO

Moreover we completed several publications, such as:
- an open access journal issue, edited by Demaria, C.; Lorusso, A.; Violi, P. and Saloul, I. (eds) “Spaces of memory. Special Issue”, Heritage, Memory and Conflict Journal, 2022
see: https://www.aup-online.com/content/journals/26665050/2/1
-an open access book, edited by Saloul, I.; Violi, P.; Lorusso, A. and Demaria, C. (eds) "Questioning Traumatic Heritage. Spaces of Memory in Europe and South America", Amsterdam: Amsterdam University
Press, 2024. see: https://www.aup.nl/en/book/9789463726856/questioning-traumatic-heritage
- a book edited by Pardo Abril, N. G., "Procesos de memoria en América Latina y el Caribe". Bogotà: Universidad Nacional de Colombia, 2024.
See: https://www.humanas.unal.edu.co/2017/investigacion/application/files/6917/1591/9485/Procesos_de_memoria_Adelanto.pdf
-two books ed by Tornay, L.; Alvarez, V., Laino Sanchis, F. and Paganini, M., "Arte y Memoria I and II", Nuevos abordajes en la elaboración de experiencias difíciles, Universidad de Buenos
Aires

Also two exhibitions to be mentioned:
- "Encountering Absence: Questioning Traumatic Heritages and Memories", thanks to UVA and H401, see: https://aihr.uva.nl/content/events/2023/05/exhibition-encounteringabsence. html
-a travelling exhibition in Buenos Aires, about and thanks to ESMA: “Intangible heritage of dictatorships"

On top of that, we have deisgned a website (www.speme.eu) regularly updated about any activity.

Progress beyond the state of the art and expected potential impact (including the socio-economic impact and the wider societal implications of the project so far)

What makes SPEME a unique project is: 1) the combination of comparative academic and professional research and approaches of traumatic heritage and memory politics in Europe and South America. 2) the conceptual and analytical theorization of the fragmentary and contested nature of official histories and local memories; 3) the multiple analytical levels of inter-sectional and international transfer of knowledge between academics and professionals in the fields of traumatic heritage and memory studies.

Since the start of the project, SPEME’s themes, events and discussions attracted a large network and institutional collaboration from various scholars and experts in the cross-cultural fields of heritage and memory studies, semiotics and trauma, museum studies, arts, literature and culture, media and gender studies, postcolonial studies, history, Holocaust and genocide studies, conflict and identity studies, conservation and restoration, digital heritage, peace studies, anthropology, sociology, and architecture. SPEME also generated a broader public engagement from other sectors and institutions such as heritage and museum professionals and policy makers involved in governing, managing, planning, designing and transforming heritage practices including heritage practitioners, museum personnel, urban planners and designers, architects as well as Unesco, ICOMOS and other international organizations and NGOs involved in conflict and traumatic heritage and the aftermath of war in Europe and South-America.
A special attention has been paid to the Education field, working in schools and in other educational settings.

SPEME Researchers' group