Osječki zbornik, Vol. Vol. 29 No. xx, 2009.
Preliminary communication
Resisting amnesia through participatory museum
Željka Miklošević
; Department of Information Sciences faculty of Humanities and Social Sciences, Zagreb, Croatia
Abstract
The paper presents a month long museum workshop
entitled Interesting Women of Osijek with a broader theoretical
framework based on museology and collective
memory theory, bringing together the concepts of individual
and institutional memory, cultural and individual
memory, lieux de mémoire (places of memory) and politics
of memory in the context of mission and educational
activities of the museum. The workshop, which included
sixteen participants, two local artists and a curator, aimed
to recover from the abyss of amnesia six female protagonists
of Osijek’s cultural life in the period between the two
world wars, namely, Ružica Pfeiffer, operetta singer, Josipa
Glembay, writer and activist, Vilma Vukelić, writer, Zora –
Vuksan Barlović, theatre director, Marta Plazzeriano, sculptor
and Elza Rechnitz, painter. The underlying principle
of the development of the entire workshop was cognitive
mapping of places of memories in Osijek which are in different
ways related to the women. Those sites of memory
were shown from the point of view of their cultural activity
whereas their personalities, explored in the socio-cultural
context, were imaginatively transposed into the present
time. Based on information gathered from the local history
museum (Museum of Slavonia), city library and state archives,
and using forms of contemporary art, such as performance,
photography, video, photomontage and methods
pertaining to the field of socially engaged art, the participants
created narratives about the women counterpoising
them with the domineering politics of memory and imposing
grandiose narratives of nationalistic history. In a form
of a fight against amnesia, the participants introduced the
women to the citizens by launching street campaigns (distributing
leaflets or setting up an information point) which
had a double objective of making the participants interpret
what they had learnt and, at the same time, making people
aware of marginalized local history and culture. The role of
the museum was that of an organizer, educator and agent
in encouraging inspirational alternatives to the historical
constructs favoured by the local authority, thus facilitating
individual process of establishing identity with the local
culture and place of living.
Keywords
Hrčak ID:
95673
URI
Publication date:
20.5.2010.
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