A preservação da memória enquanto instrumento de cidadania

Quando fomos convidados para participar deste painel, cujo tema é "A Preservação da Memória Enquanto Instumento de Cidadania - papel dos museus", em um evento que tem como objetivo maior discutir a formação de pessoal para museus e patrimônio, no quadro de políticas culturais de preservação e comunicação do patrimônio, da América Latina, fomos motivados a tomar esse convite como um momento de reflexão, de volta para nós mesmos, isto é: a nossa atuação como educadora, concretizada nos diversos programas que temos desenvolvido com alunos do Curso de Museologia da Universidade Federal da Bahia, estudantes e professores do 1º e 2º graus da rede oficial de ensino da Cidade do Salvador.

O pesadelo da amnésia colectiva : um estudo sobre os conceitos de memória, tradição e traços do passado

"Blade Runner", o filme de Ridlley Scott traduzido por "O Caçador de Andróides" - está de volta, dez anos após seu lançamento, trazendo, novamente, as imagens do desenvolvimento tecnológico e declínio urbano retiradas da obra de Philip K. Dicke e veiculando nossos medos e fantasias de perda de identidade e desumanização. O tema, caracterizado tão bem em clássicos do cinema, como "Metropolis", de Fritz Lang; "Tempos Modernos", de Charles Chaplin; e "Citizen Kane", de Orson Welles, não é, portanto, novo e periodicamente volta ao debate.

Transformative museology

“…we have to take into account the fact that museology and museums are two completely different things.” Martin R. Shärer[1] In the 20th century, growing populations produced a growing body of heritage. The transmission of this heritage to succeeding generations coalesced into three major modern institutions: universities, library/archives and museums. Traditional systems of social and cultural memory had become overloaded and therefore evolved conceptually. This evolution took place within the primary context of a naturally occurring museology through the process I call museogenesis. The term museogenesis refers to the origin and development of museological thought in a specific cultural context. By museological thought, I refer to ideas and theories surrounding the parameters of “the natural and cultural heritage, the activities concerned with the preservation and communication of this heritage, the institutional frame-work, and society as a whole” (Mensch 1992). This broadly inclusive definition relates museology to another broadly defined concept: cultural context. By cultural context, I refer to the “webs of significance and systems of meaning which is the collective property of a group” (Geertz 1973). [1] ICOFOM Study Series – ISS 34, 2003, ISS 34_03.pdf, p.7

Memory and power : two movements

The institutions that work with the preservation and diffusion of cultural heritage - be them archive, libraries, museums, art galleries or cultural centres - present a certain discourse about reality. To understand this discourse, composed by sound and silence, by fullness and emptiness, by presence and absence, by remembrance and forgetting, an operation is implied, not only with the enunciation of speech and its gaps, but also the comprehension of that which causes to speak, of who is speaking and of the point whence one speaks. Preservation and destruction, or, in another way, conservation and loss, walk hand in hand in the arteries of life. As suggested by Nietzsche (1999, p.273), it is impossible to live without loss, it is entirely impossible to live avoiding destruction to play its game and drive the dynamics of life on. However, by means of a kind of tautological argument, one often justifies preservation by the imminence of loss and memory by the threat of forgetting. Thus, one ceases to consider that the game and the rules of the game between forgetting and memory are not fed by themselves and that preservation and destruction are not opposed in a deadly duel, but instead they complement one another and are always at the service of subjects that build themselves and are built through social practices. To indicate that memories and forgettings can be sown and cultivated corroborates the importance of working towards the denaturalisation of these concepts and towards the understanding that they result from a construction process also involving other forces, such as: power. Power is a sower, a promoter of memories and forgettings.

Desire for memory, desire for museums: the experience of the Memory Hotspots

Considering the principles of the National Museum Policy, created in 2003, the Brazilian Museums Institute – Ibram supports and encourages the development of museum practices and processes aimed at rewriting the history of social groups which were deprived of the right to narrate and exhibit their memories and their heritage. As effective action, in 2008, the Department of Museums and Cultural Centres (Demu/Iphan) – which gave rise to Ibram in January 2009 – started the Memory Hotspots Programme, with the main goal of fostering wide popular participation in matters related to social memory and museums. The Memory Hotspots Programme was inspired in and directly influenced by the Ministry of Culture/MinC, which created the National Programme for Culture, Education and Citizenship (Living Culture). The purpose of this Programme is to contribute to make society conquer spaces, exchange experiences and develop initiatives that foster culture and citizenship, in a proactive manner. The partnership struck between civil society and the state power gave rise to Culture Hotspots, inspired in the anthropological “do-in” concept, idealized by the then Minster Gilberto Gil.