Roundtable: Moving Memory

Abstract

This roundtable brings together a group of academics and artists working throughout Europe to discuss the question of memory in theoretical and artistic contexts at a historical moment highly preoccupied with acts of commemoration and moving memory. As the convenors of this roundtable, we are working and writing within an Irish context. Hence, we ourselves are in the middle of the Irish State’s ‘Decade of Centenaries’, which marks events from 1912–1922 and the founding of the Irish Free State. At the time of coordinating this roundtable, we have been engaged in the yearlong celebration of the Easter Rising centenary in particular, celebrations that have raised anew debates about scales of commemorative practice in relationship to the representation of militarisation as a primary commemorative mode at state level and the need to animate and centralise marginalised voices, particularly those of women and children. The artists participating in this roundtable from both the Republic and Northern Ireland have engaged centrally with questions of national narratives, minority histories, and scales of remembrance as communal (or performative) acts; the academic participants are, likewise, informed by their work in diverse areas of memory studies, and particularly by their membership of the COST Action Network In Search of Transcultural Memory in Europe (2012–16).