Roundtable: Moving Memory

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).