Artistic and activist memory-work: Approaching place-based practice

While an emerging interdisciplinary field of memory studies exists, what it is and might become remains open to debate. This article calls for a memory studies agenda that remains sensitive to the ways individuals and groups experience memory as multi-sensual, spatial ways of understanding their worlds. Artistic and activist memory-work in particular offers at least two contributions to such an agenda. It challenges ontological assumptions that underpin much of the recent interdisciplinary body of research on memory, including understandings of site, social and body memory, and the role of place in memory; and it invites scholars to consider their research in terms of socially responsible place-based practice. In this article, I discuss sites of social engagement, embodied and social memory, and wounded places to consider how artistic and activist place-based practice might fundamentally change how memory studies scholars think about their research.