A Whale of a Bad Time: Memory for Sustainable Futures

Graphic Design: Compact This blog is a thought experiment for the exhibition titled A Whale of a Bad Time. Curator: Zsófia Kókai and Exhibiting artists: Ivor Almásy, István Felsmann, Sára Gink-Miszlivetz, Katalin Kortmann-Járay, Karina Mendreczky, Balázs Máté Tóth, Márton Emil Tóth. I visited this exhibition in September 2020 with an interest to explore connections with our Reconnect / Recollect project. The exhibition portrays the 90s generations' childhood memories. While remembering childhood, the past, present and future meet. In the process of remembering, images…

‘EAST’ Premiere in Budapest

Spacetime Provocations with Childhood Memories With overwhelming success, the play ‘KELET/EAST’ premiered to a full house in Trafo Theatre on September 22-23, 2020 in Budapest, Hungary. Performed by Dollardadd’s theater group, the play was inspired by childhood memories of the post/socialist periods produced as a part of the Recollect / Reconnect project.  The play tells the story of Roland who won the 1986 Talent Show in Hungary for his clown performance and received a much coveted award - a trip…

Re/connecting research and teaching: Memory work as pedagogical tool

In our research project, ‘Re-Connect / Re-Collect: Crossing the Divides through Memories of Cold War Childhoods’, we explore memory stories created in collective biography workshops that tell about experiences of childhood in socialist societies during the Cold War. The project brings into view personal histories with an aim to connect generations and the public across still existing divides. Utilizing the perspectives of our research and turning memory work into a pedagogical tool, we decided to experiment with a course at…

Un/Doing Collective Biography

In September and October 2019, our memory workshops ran across 4 sites - Berlin, Riga, Helsinki and Mexico City. We were excited to meet participants in person after getting to know everyone a little bit through online workshops and our online workspace on Slack. Alongside generating memory stories through sharing, discussion and writing, we also incorporated site-specific arts-based experiments and visits to exhibitions and theater. We decided to use collective biography (Davies and Gannon, 2006) as a methodology to produce…

Read our new blog on Palgrave’s Children and Youth page!

Children’s ordinary lives in (post)socialist societies: Remembering social transformations In this article Zsuzsa Millei, Nelli Piattoeva, and Iveta Silova, editors of Childhood and Schooling in (Post)Socialist Societies, discuss their research into the everyday lives of children in (post)socialist societies. Thirty years since the fall of the Berlin wall, the media and public forums continue to be fascinated with aspects of everyday life in socialist societies. There are museums dedicated to this historical period, such as the interactive DDR museum in…