Arquivo de etiquetas: Ação museal

A manifesto to rethink the function of the museum

The principles of a museology that really represents colective memory must meet participatory processes.

The function of museums must incorporate education and develop empowerment of local people who are also part of local heritage.

A museum must open itself to dialogue in order to preserve, transform and communicate values related to the life of local population; the museum provides the communication tools (and even technology) that promote access and possibility of community participation.

The apolitical museum does not exist. The neutral museum does not exist. The museum is part of a time and a space and is the fruit of interpersonal relationships.

All narratives, whether exhibitions or other activities, are products of “a cut.”, a choice. Therefore, it is not inert matter, the museum is organic, rhizomatic, alive.

But today the museum experiences are free, they allow the experiences rewriting.

Museums question themselves, and they are included in the dilemmas of the present time.

Because the museum belongs to all that finally inhabit a city, a village, a neighborhood, a street, a country, the world!

The museum should be the a place where people find something of their history, but it is above all the place where people meet theirs and their own stories and histories, in revelations of identity in a place of discovery.

A renewed museology, engaged, full of people and life(s), is possible, every day, in new cases that proliferate, resilient, sometimes in local museums that wish to other stories, with other protagonists, those who have never been told, where there are endless people. And who cares to tell his version of reality, his look.

Often from the perspective of those who have been on the margins of the great decisions of power. The history of these people is the history of life of all the dawns and dusk that witness the history of places.

Museums with social intervention are needed to reject the field of neutrality and the social ambivalence: museums of all people and for the whole people, without fear of participating, with no prejudice.

New museums are accurate, new museums have no walls, the renewed museum is mixed with local issues and with global themes.

The genesis of the museums is partial, segmental. It tells an hegemonic and elitist narrative. We could, perhaps, retell the history of museums to their provenance of collection, private offices and curiosity cabinets, apanagio of certain privileged, rich, eccentric individuals; cabinets that are later blossomed into museums with official, national and imperial discourses, used as symbols, as brands of power and reaffirmation of values of power.

The museums we want they are multivocal, unlimited or at least with borders which are so wide and diffuse that they cannot be monitored: museums of freedom and action.

As a living element, the museum must react and become involved in the themes of the world and also in lives of people who are part of that museum, of that place. Just as it should represent the symbols and objects that have historical and affective value to the community.

New museums are desired; new museums aware of themselves that dare to idealize futures, to imagine scenarios, to think a new society. We need museums of conflict, dissent museums are desired.

So the discussion is not only about concepts to use or not be used. The discussion should address debate about the role and function of museums in the society. We don’t want to be out of this discussion. That’s why we are proposing this point of view, maybe a breaking point.

As alunas e alunos de Sociomuseologia da Universidade Lusófona

Memória e Teoria social: Limites e campos emergentes para a ação museal

miriamspulveda

De Myrian Sppúlveda dos Santos, este “Memória Colectiva e Teoria social”, publicado em 2012 pela Imprensa da Universidade de Coimbra e da editora do Brasil  Annablume, constitui a 2ª edição do trablho de doutoramente da autora, realizado entre 89 e 93 na New Scholl of Social Resaerch.

Trata-se dum trabalho marcado pelo seu tempo, pelas polémicas e problemáticas. Tem contudo uma grande atualidade teórica para o trabalho sobre a memória social, pois a partir duma diversidade de abordagens atinge-se com mestria uma visão da complexidade  do trabalho sobre a memória coletiva como fenómeno. social.

A primeira parte do livro detalha com rigor o trabalhos dos classicos.A questão da relação do indivíduo com o coletivo como paradigma fundacional desta problemática. A abordagem da memória como um ritual de desenvolvimento de solidariedade no grupo, as marcas como monumentos e patrimónios que evidenciam as condições de “lugares de memória”. Ainda nesta primeira parte trabalham-se algumas abordagens mais minuciosas onde se procuram entende os processo de criação de redes simbólicas partilhadas pelos indivíduos.

Na segunda parte procura-se trabalhar a partir duma teoria crítica interroga-se a objectivação da memória colectiva.Os estudos sobre as narrativas da memória evidenciam que a linguagem  não só é uma interpretação do passado a partir do presente, como ela é também uma presença desse passado no presente. Esse questão introduz e bem a questão dos limites da teoria social sobre a memória. Trata-se duma abordagem rica que mobilizam diverso autores. ainda que as suas interpretações não sejam consensuais .

Para quem conhece os trabalhos desenvolvidos pela autora, após o seu doutoramento, este livro ajuda a entender o seu percurso de investigação e entende a actualidade da reflexão que aí é feita. Salienta-se, entre outros, os trabalhos sobre a formação das memória dos afrodescendentes no Brasil.

A utilidade deste livro para o nosso debate sobre a Memória Social advém das interrogação que  a autora faz sobre os limites da teoria social sobre a memória coletiva e, fundamentalmente a sua importância como processo de conhecimento. Uma questão que como salientamos no nosso artigo “Memórias Esbranquiçadas” relaciona a razão e a emoção como indutores de ação social.