Luisa Passerini CONVERSATIONS ON VISUAL MEMORY Luisa Passerini is Professor Emerita of History at the European University Institute, Florence, and has been Principal Investigator of the European Research Council Project “Bodies Across Borders: Oral and Visual Memory in Europe and Beyond”, 2013-2018. Among her books: Women and Men in Love. European Identities in the Twentieth Century (2012); Memory and Utopia. The Primacy of Intersubjectivity (2007); Europe in Love, Love in Europe (1999); Autobiography of a Ge- neration. Italy 1968 (1996); Fascism in Popular Memory (1987). © Luisa Passerini 2018 The image on the cover, drawn by Tarik El Amiri in Turin in April 2013, represents his journey from Morocco to Spain and Italy. Contents Acknowledgements 5 Prologue 9 PART ONE DISTANT VOICES, PRESENT LIVES Chapter 1. Acts of Mapping: Jerry Bruner 17 Chapter 2. Remote Pasts, Possible Worlds: Magdy Youssef; Blerina Cuni; Antony 33 Chapter 3. Signs, Sounds, and Skills 51 The written, the oral and the figurative: Mihail Tirdea; Irina Stan; Ali Arush; Stefan Alexandru Mihai; Florina Claudia Negut; Alina Gabriela Bolog 51 Graphism: Gianni Carchia 66 Gestural and Material Transmission: Jack Goody. Youssef Boukkouss; Tarik El Amiri 75 PART TWO DIALOGUES BETWEEN IMAGES Chapter 4. Figurative Borders of Europe 101 Emptiness, Absences: Eva Leitolf. Leonardo Puris; Mohamed. Ai Weiwei 101 Presences Across Frontiers: Victor López González. Henry Moses; Maricica Anasie; Ludmila Dmitriev 119 Chapter 5. Reverberations and Critical Distances in Mobility Research: Ursula Biemann 141 Multiple Mobilities: Luz Fabiola Sanmaniego Jimenez 143 Modes of Knowledge: Hanane Radouane; Angelica Judith Canchi Cornejo 156 Chapter 6. Keywords for Shared Memories: Bouchra Khalili 181 Mirror: Jean-Willy Mundele-Makusu 182 Hand and Voice: Abdou Cissé; Laila Mountassir 198 Constellation: Iryna Prokaza 213 Appendix. Interviewees’ Places of Origin and Arrival 231 Index of Names 233 Acknowledgements My thanks go first and foremost to the interviewees, who shared gen- erously of their experiences through their oral, visual, and written nar- rations. The encounters with each of them contributed not only to this book but also to my understanding of the present situation in Italy and Europe and of the everyday relationships among people of various cul- tural and geographical origins. I met most of the narrators personally, and some I came to know thanks to the interviews done by the team of the “Bodies across Borders: Oral and Visual Memory in Europe and Beyond” research project, of which I have been the principal investiga- tor from 2013 to 2018. This book owes a great deal to all of the inter- viewees of the project, who are much more numerous than those who appear here: Magdy Youssef; Blerina Cuni; Antony; Mihail Tirdea; Irina Stan; Ali Arush; Stefan Alexandru Mihai; Florina Claudia Negut; Alina Gabriela Bolog; Youssef Boukkouss; Tarik El Amiri; Leonardo Puris; Mohamed; Henry Moses; Maricica Anasie; Ludmila Dmitriev; Luz Fabiola Sanmaniego Jimenez; Hanane Radouane; Angelica Judith Canchi Cornejo; Jean-Willy Mundele-Makusu; Abdou Cissé; Laila Mountassir; and Iryna Prokaza. I am very grateful to them, as well as to the teachers who made these encounters possible, especially Elena Gobbi of “Aristide Gabelli”, a school for adult education in Turin, Italy. The oral, written, and visual testimonies, as well as all of the materi- al collected for the Project, will be deposited at the Historical Archives of the European Union, European University Institute (EUI), Florence, and will, in compliance with the privacy regulations, be made publicly 6 CONVERSATIONS ON VISUAL MEMORY accessible. I am very thankful to Dieter Schlenker, the director of the Archives, for his acceptance of this fund (see the Appendix of this book for details about the material). Each of the interviewees signed a release form giving us permission to make their interviews and visual material, as well as the transcripts of their testimonies, accessible. They all received a copy of their release forms after being informed of their rights as research participants. Some requested a pseudonym (in this case, only their first names are used in the book), or complete anonymity. I am deeply thankful to the artists who contributed directly to the construction of this book. I greatly appreciated the exchanges with them on both personal and artistic grounds: Eva Leitolf, Victor López González, Ursula Biemann, and Bouchra Khalili discussed their work (and mine) over the course of long and fruitful conversations and gave me permis- sion to reproduce some of their works. I am grateful for their expressed interest in taking a cultural historical approach to their work rather than one that is informed by knowledge of the history of art and aesthetic theories. In the field of art, my exchanges with Bernard Utudjian of the Galerie Polaris in Paris were extremely helpful, and Pharoah Marsan, his assistant, was very kind in providing me with useful documentation. I am also very thankful to Monica Ferrando for her kindness in sending me Gianni Carchia’s images. This book would not exist without the collaboration of the follow- ing people: Giada Giustetto, a BABE researcher, who shared with me the joys and sorrows of fieldwork and analysis, providing ideas, criticism and irony; Laura Borgese, who assisted the Project at the Department of History of the EUI, with intelligence and enthusiasm; Radhika Johari, who edited the book’s language content, providing precious insights and advice; Francesco Borio (Bodo), who mediated between me and the world of computers while bringing to this work his interest in contemporary art; and my husband Corrado Agnes, who often discusses issues of vis- uality with me and who shared the friendships with Jerry Bruner and Jack Goody. I am warmly thankful to all the friends who appear in this book: Fabrice Dubosc, Ron Grele, and Dario Squilloni. ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS 7 I would like to thank the entire BABE team: Graziella Bonansea, Liliana Ellena, Giada Giustetto, Leslie Hernández Nova, Iris van Huis, Gabriele Proglio, and Milica Trakilovic for their contributions to this research project. I owe much to the students of the courses and seminars that I have taught over the years during which I wrote this book for their com- ments and suggestions: the classes of the Oral History Master of Arts (OHMA) program at the Interdisciplinary Center for Innovative Theory and Empirics at Columbia University, New York; the classes of the doc- toral program at the Department of History, EUI, Florence, in which I was invited by colleagues to present the BABE Project; and the Summer Institute jointly organized by OHMA, BABE, and the Department of History and Civilization (HEC), EUI in June 2017. The following members of the BABE Advisory Committee were par- ticularly supportive and attentive to our effort: Ioanna Laliotou, Lutz Niethammer, Marina Nordera, and Irit Rogoff. Some of them contributed constructively to the BABE Final Conference that presented the results of the project, held at the EUI and the Archivio di Stato, Florence on April 26-27 2018. Gustavo Zagrebelsky, the Project’s ethical advisor provided useful advice on the ethical and juridical implications of our work. Some colleagues helpfully discussed with me various aspects of the research. Among these colleagues were Federico Romero and Alexander Etkind of HEC, EUI; Anna Triandafyllidou of the Robert Schuman Centre, EUI; Mary Marshall Clark of the Columbia Center for Oral History Research, Columbia University; Andrea Smorti of the Department of Psychology at the University of Florence; and Sandro Triulzi of the Archivio Memorie Migranti, Rome. I would like to thank the Project’s external collaborators: Mario Alvarez, Dario Cicchero, Karen Diehl, Valerio Finessi, Fabio Franz, Nicki Pombier-Berger, Zofia Laubitz, and the curators of the BABE exhibi- tion, MemoriaImmagine, Archives of a Europe under Construction at the Archivio di Stato in Florence, Barbara D’Ambrosio and Costanza Meli. I would like to acknowledge that the BABE Project received fund- ing from the European Research Council under the European Union’s 8 CONVERSATIONS ON VISUAL MEMORY Seventh Framework Programme (FP/2007–2013)/ERC Grant Agreement no. 29585. In the years 2013–2018, the Project was based at the EUI’s Department of History: I am very thankful for the hospitality that this host institution offered to me and the BABE team. Prologue This book is an experiment: the result of a hybrid way of writing that combines some results of my research project in the field of cultural his- tory with reminiscences of my life and of the friends and artists with whom I engaged in intellectual and emotional exchanges linked with that research project. The project mentioned in the Acknowledgements, “Bodies Across Borders: Oral and Visual Memory in Europe and Beyond” (BABE), was born of my need to expand the scope of my research on memory from the collection and study of oral testimonies to the inves- tigation of visual memory. BABE’s methodological innovation con- sists mainly in this expansion within the context of an intersubjective approach focusing on memories of moving toward and through Europe and on the cultural implications of this process. Some of the friends who inspired the first part of this book are no longer with us; they were evoked by my research practice and the ques- tions posed by the process of interviews. In these cases, there are no tape recordings and not even anything similar to a diary, just my own memories of them, which were and remain very vivid. Sometimes they were revived by the process of writing, while my inner ear kept replay- ing extracts of our conversations. As for other friends mentioned in this book, fortunately they are still valued interlocutors in my continuing research and reflections on visuality. The second part of this book is based on exchanges of various kinds with visual artists, which have not only deepened my understanding of the artistic process and results but have also greatly enriched my life 10 CONVERSATIONS ON VISUAL MEMORY and ideas.