Photo: Memória Imaterial
MEMORIAMEDIA Review 5. 2020. MI/IELT ISSN 2183-3753
Life Stories and Narratives 1 / Histórias de Vida e Narrativas 1
The MEMORIAMEDIA Review publish its first issue on the theme "LIFE STORIES and NARRATIVES". Why this theme? The MEMORIAMEDIA Review works on intangible cultural heritage, collective memory and oral history, but why did we choose to work on this specific theme?
We justify this choice based on different assumptions. We can look at life stories and narratives as tools, techniques or even methodological approaches from the Social and Human Sciences. Still, we can go further and see life stories as expressions of intangible cultural heritage (ICH). Considering the 2003 Convention, UNESCO does not consider life stories as an ICH domain, but our life is a living heritage, which we transmit through generations and that defines us as individuals and as a collective.
Aren't our lives the most important heritage that we can share?
Everyone has a role in the community. Listening to their stories is a way to promote personal and social integration. It is a way to promote collective memory, cultural diversity and human creativity.
In this issue, we have Vita Yakovlyeva writing an autoethnographic narrative constructed around a paper "doll house" created by the author in her childhood, in Ukraine.
We have Yorgos Prodromou narrating the murder of a Turkish Cypriot. A killing that took place in 1964, a period in which the Bi-Communal violence between Greek Cypriots and Turkish Cypriots reached its breaking point.
Through oral history, Christa Nemnom presents three interviews that draw directly from the museum guards' perspectives and knowledge on the National Gallery of Canada.
Crossing ICH and narratives, María José Bejarano Salazar and Marco Bonilla share an e-Exhibition about the "Museum Bodies for Empathy". A project which pursued social reconciliation through dance and heritage in three Colombian communities: Cali, Galeras and La Guajira.
From Argentina, we have a video and an article of Martina Cassiau on life stories and traditional artisanal spinning and weaving techniques.
"The ethnographer as a storyteller" is an essay wrote by Eino Heikkilä, from Finland. In this article, the ethnographer is viewed as a storyteller, a narrator of an ethnography.
To finish, we are pleased to have Robert Perks presenting the ambitious and exemplar project of National Life Stories-British Library.
Filomena Sousa