Moving Memory: difficult histories in dialogue

[ image credit Kirubel, featuring Hourig Attarian’s “Threading a Map” ]

2015 – 16, research project, multi-sited exhibition and event, CAN

Role: Curatorial and project management consultant

“… The best way I can describe Anique’s role and the way she initiated and led our collaboration is that she was the perfect midwife for it. I deeply appreciated her practice in how she created a safe and nurturing environment for the unfolding of our endless questions and exploration. The way she held our stories and wove them together with gentle and consistent probing opened up new spaces of voicing and storying I believe in. And for that I am grateful.”

Professor Hourig Attarian, American University Armenia

How can you communicate different histories of violence in a shared space? “Moving Memory” was a collaborative multi-sited research exhibition about the Armenian and Roma genocides that proposes creative solutions to museological and scholarly conflicts around commemoration. The exhibit, a mix of performance and interactive digital media installations, took place in the Curating and Public Scholarship Lab/ Centre for Ethnographic Research in the Aftermath of Violence exhibition lab as well as opening up into a the public-panel-relay in the atrium of Concordia’s EV building. By literally moving memory, this project interlinks physical, discursive, and digital spaces of representation, catalyzing the movement of ideas and historical narratives locally and transnationally, and prompting audiences to think through histories of violence in relation to, rather than in opposition to one another. The exhibit launched on June 6th, 2016 as part of the Association of Critical Heritage Studies conference hosted by Concordia University and UQAM. Collaborators included Professor Hourig Attarian and Dr Nadine Blumer.