News
MNEMUS in Vabamu
From June 9, 2023, as a part of our project’s public outreach, a new audio journey opened at Museum of Occupations and Freedom Vabamu’s permanent exhibition titled From “such people” to LGBT activism. Stories from sexual and gender minorities in the 20th century Estonia. The curator of the new audio journey is Rebeka Põldsam, a doctoral student in ethnology at the University of Tartu. The new audio guide layer guides the exhibition visitor through the Vabamu permanent exhibition, drawing attention to some new and some old objects that help understand Estonia’s LGBT history.
Conference Post/Socialist Memory Cultures in Transition
On Sept 20-23, 2023 the international conference Post-Socialist Memory Cultures in Transition took place in Tallinn, co-organized by our project team.
The aim of the conference was to study the changes in post-socialist, especially Eastern, Central and South-East European memory cultures, which have emerged as a result of transnational, regional, national and local tensions and interactions, and have received a new direction since Russia’s war of aggression in Ukraine. One of the common themes of the conference was “Mnemonic pluralism and critical dialogue in museums”. In five panels discussing museum and memory work, researchers and museum workers from Ukraine, Poland, Finland, Germany, Great Britain, Lithuania, the Czech Republic, France, Hungary, the Netherlands and Estonia presented their research. A separate panel was devoted to the vulnerability and preservation of Ukrainian cultural heritage in war conditions. One of the plenary speakers at the conference was Erica Lehrer from Concordia University.The other organizers of the conference are Tallinn University Project Translated Memory: Eastern European Past on the Global Arena (ERC, Eneken Laanes) and the Working Group for Post-Socialist and Comparative Memory Studies (PoSoCoMeS).
Presentations
Ene Kõresaar will be presenting at the Nordic Voices Project’s workshop “Oral histories, life stories and analysing significance in museums“, October 5-7, 2023, University of Turku. Presentation “Revisiting the Use of Life Stories in the Museum: a Baltic Perspective”.
Ene Kõresaar, “Museum Memories after Post-Communism: Representing Soviet-time Collaboration in Baltic History Museums”, presentation at the 2nd PoSoCoMeS conference “Post-Socialist Memory Culture in Transition“, Sept 20-23, Tallinn University.
Kirsti Jõesalu & Ene Kõresaar, “Past migration – present communities: re-presenting the post-WWII migration and Russophone minority in Baltic history museums”, The Memory Studies Association Conference “Communities & Change”, July 3-7, 2023, Newcastle University UK.
On 15-17 June 2023 CBSE Turning Points: Values and Conflicting Futures in the Baltics took place in Kaunas, Lithuania. MNEMUS presented our work in the panel “Museum Practices as Memory Work” (June 17th):
- Linara Dovydaityte, How to Remember? Memory Mediation in Baltic Museums
- Margaret Comer, Dark Heritage in Tallinn: Memory Narratives at Museums of Soviet and Nazi Repression
- Ene Kõresaar, Curator as a Mnemonic Agent: How Baltic Curators Position Themselves in the Field of Remembering
- Jana Reidla, The Position and Practice of Baltic History Museums in the Collecting Work
