Over and Over and Over Again

Over the last twenty years, reenactment has been appropriated by both contemporary artistic production and art-theoretical discourse, becoming a distinctive strategy to engage with history and memory. As a critical act of repetition, which is never neutral in reactualizing the past, it has established unconventional modes of historicization and narration. Collecting work by artists, scholars, curators, and museum administrators, the volume investigates reenactment's potential for a (re)activation of layered temporal experiences, and its value as an ongoing interpretative and political gesture performed in the present with an eye to the future. Its contributions discuss the mobilization of archives in the struggle for inclusiveness and cultural revisionism; the role of the body in the presentification and rehabilitation of past events and (impermanent) objects; the question of authenticity and originality in artistic practice, art history, as well as in museum collections and conservation practices.

Da arqueologia à arquitetura: história e memória gay a partir da série “Hollywood”

O artigo aborda a história e a memória das pessoas gays a partir da série “Hollywood” (2020). De cunho hermenêutico, a interpretação do objeto de análise parte da reflexão sobre comunicação, temporalidades, história, sonhos e sua relação com a obra de arte. Para tanto, interroga a cronologia dos fatos ligados à história da homossexualidade e sua relação com o imaginário gay, considerando o parâmetro temporal e o estético, para compreender a narrativa em sua dimensão factual e fictícia, amparando-se nas contribuições de Foucault (2007), Freud (2006) e Latour (2019). Como resultado, ressalta a temporalidade diferenciada da obra de arte e sua contribuição para a construção identitária dos gays.From archeology to architecture: history and gay memory from the “Hollywood” seriesAbstractThe article addresses the history and memory of gay people from the series “Hollywood” (2020). With a hermeneutic nature, the interpretation of the object of analysis starts from the reflection on communication, temporalities, history, dreams and their relationship with the work of art. Therefore, it interrogates the chronology of facts related to the history of homosexuality and its relationship with the gay imagination, considering the temporal and aesthetic parameters, in order to understand the narrative in its factual and fictional dimension, based on the contributions of Foucault (2007), Freud (2006) and Latour (2019). As a result, it highlights the differentiated temporality of the work of art and its contribution to the construction of gay identity.Keywords: Gay culture; memory; history; time; “Hollywood” series.

History and Memory of Dissident Sexualities from Latin America

This article focuses on Red Latinoamericana de Archivos, Museos, Acervos y Investigadores LGBTQIA+ (AMAI LGBTQIA+), a network composed of researchers and institutions related to LGBTQIA+ memory in Latin America, founded in 2019. First, the authors analyse the network’s creation arising from the discontent of some participants of the June 2019 Archives, Libraries, Museums and Special Collections (ALMS) Conference, in Berlin, who felt bothered by the lack of attention given to subaltern perspectives on LGBTQIA+ history and memory. Next, the authors describe and analyse the network’s first year of activities communicated through its Facebook group. Multiple challenges arose from creating a network with members from different national origins, languages, and identities, especially considering the conservative political contexts of several Latin American countries and the social distancing measures imposed by the COVID-19 pandemic. Next, the authors present a general profile of the network’s members and a map of partner institutions. Finally, the article points out some challenges to the network’s continuity and its desire to render Latin America more visible in the broader panorama of global LGBTQIA+ history. The authors conclude by highlighting the importance of AMAI LGBTQIA+ in stimulating further discussions about the participation of global-south researchers and perspectives on global queer history initiatives.

A FOTOGRAFIA COMO FONTE DE PESQUISA PARA HISTÓRIA E MEMÓRIA DE UM MUNICÍPIO TOCANTINENSE

Research on photography with a focus on a city in the state of Tocantins is a way to try to tell of the history of this city, since there is little information or files that reveal part of this history. This research has as its main objective to identify, through photographic records, the history and memory of the city of Tocantinopolis - TO, Brazil. Of a qualitative approach and basic nature, the data collection instruments used were visual sources (photographs) regarding Tocantinopolis - TO, in addition to bibliographic research. Among some results found, the analyzed images revealed part of the history and the memory of this city. The information generated in the analyses helped us to identify visual elements present in the photographs that allowed us to expand the reading and interpretation capacity, which was fundamental to understand the stories, memories and the context that accompany (or accompanied) these images registered in this research.

There Was So Much Silence Growing Up…: Artistic Interventions of Tomie Arai and Flo Oy Wong

This essay explores the specific artworks of Asian American artists Tomie Arai and Flo Oy Wong as complex articulations between culture, identity, history, and memory. Based on oral history interviews that were integral parts of their artistic processes, Arai and Wong created works that explored the family histories and memories of Asian immigrants and Asian Americans living in New York City’s Chinatown and California. Their artworks open up a space to explore memory as a way of knowing that is shaped not only by what is said, but more importantly by what is not said—by silences and secrets.

When Environmental History Goes Public in China

This article starts out from looking at what is missing from environmental history in China today, and then goes on to ask a particular set of questions: How does one interpret environmental history with the public? How does one present environmental history in public space? How does one engage with an environmentally conscious public? And ultimately, is it possible to establish public environmental history as a new mode of knowledge? In answer to these questions, it focuses on relationships, including the relationships between nature and culture, the environment and people, and history and memory. Using the dredging history of West Lake in Hangzhou as an illustrative case, it explores nature as material culture, calls attention to the rhetorical power of nature, and argues that environmental history should be interpreted and presented as public memory.

Places of Memory: Holocaust Memorials in Vidzeme and Their Symbolic Language

In analysing the symbolic language of Holocaust memorials, the author uses the concept of lieux de mémoire, elaborated by the French historian Pierre Nora. Nora highlights the essential differences, even rupture, between history and memory and the growing importance of lieux de mémoire, places of memory that lie between memory and history. The task of these places is to return the event to the present, reviving it in both the individual memory and the memory of society. Therefore, a memorial can also be considered a lieu de memoire. Moreover, the memorial is a more complicated case with material, symbolic and functional significance, a lieu de mémoire and a historical text with changing relations between them. The paper will briefly describe the basic principles of Holocaust iconography and the history of the development of Holocaust memorials as a new genre of commemorative art. The author will look at the development of this genre in Latvia using the example of memorials dedicated to victims of Nazism in Vidzeme. The monument’s symbolic language and whether it has been influenced by the specific place and events or whether artists have followed a specific iconographic canon will be explained. The examples will also be considered from the point of view of the dialectics between a place of memory and a historical text, mentioned above.