September, 30 & October, 1 2024
Negotiating a shared European memory culture opens new perspectives in national discourses on memory politics. This is a crucial finding from Madrid’s cultural encounter “Memorias | Memories”. Considering the democratic crisis in Europe, one key to strengthening Europe lies in the question of who we are as Europeans and who we want to be. A joint pluralization of memory culture can significantly promote cohesion and democracy.
Since 2021, the Coalition for Pluralistic Public Discourse (CPPD) has worked as a collaborative network with over 200 partners on artistic, civil society, and educational policy concepts for pluralistic remembrance in Germany and Europe. A central component of this work is the »Memory Matters« festival series, which in 2024 took place in four German and two European cities, including the European Congress in collaboration with the Goethe-Institut Madrid and the Instituto Cervantes.
Sociologist Emilio Silva Barrera, founder of the Association for the Recovery of Historical Memory (ARMH), and Dr. Max Czollek, author and curator of the CPPD, discussed promoting political actions incorporating diverse perspectives into official memory discourses. Czollek referred to German memory politics, which tells a one-dimensional reparation narrative. At the same time, Silva emphasized that the need to address both the Franco dictatorship and the Civil War is growing in Spain. Both called on civil society’s strength to resist political realities and violence. Loreto Urraca, the Spanish representative of the collective “Disobedient Stories, Descendants of Perpetrators of Genocide for Memory, Truth, and Justice,” illustrated how people can be politically engaged in memory beyond academic discourse by centering their personal family history in their activism. Noa K. Ha drew the attention of a large audience to the postcolonial perception of public urban space.
With Tunay Önder, Julia Cortegana de la Fuente, Victorino Mayoral Cortés, and Jo Frank, four educational and cultural initiatives representatives presented various projects to promote a pluralistic memory culture. Whether through documentary theater, political education projects, public digital memory archives, or solidarity networks for plural memory culture – all advocated for expanding European networking. Global conflicts further underscored the need for European cohesion: the war in the Middle East, with its enormous implications for memory politics, also influenced the discussions on-site.
Another highlight of the festival was the Dynamic Memory Lab’s opening in the Goethe-Institut garden. CPPD board member Hannan Salamat, Kelly Laubinger, founder of the Sinti Union Schleswig-Holstein, as well as regional curator and the first representative of the Gitanos community in the Madrid regional government, Gitano activist Samuel Escudero, advocated for greater visibility of marginalized communities like the Spanish Sinti* and Roma* in public spaces across Europe by emphasizing the dissemination and recognition of individual stories and historical events.
International dialogue formats are of crucial importance for shaping a pluralistic European future. They enable learning from one another, identifying common challenges, and providing new impulses for European memory culture. The various events in Madrid were part of the CPPD’s “Memory Matters” festival series, which in 2024 included events, workshops, artistic positions, and discussions in four German and two European cities.
The closing festival 2024, titled “Where do we go from here? Remembering the Present: February 24, October 7 & June 9,” will take place on October 19 at the Academy of Arts in Berlin. Please note: The event will be held in German.
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