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This article investigates unofficial memory projects that have arisen in Australia in response to the institutional abuse of children. While the role of activists in pushing for the enactment of state responses is beginning to be understood, activist demands for recognition have taken a multitude of forms beyond this. Unofficial memory projects are indicative of this, exemplified by a diverse range of publicly situated cultural forms that re-present abuse to wider audiences. Focusing on two examples that have arisen in Australia in recent years – the grassroots phenomenon known as Loud Fence that grew out of the Victorian town of Ballarat, and the Australian Orphanage Museum that was established by Care leavers in 2023 – I examine these as examples of memory activism which generate counter-archives of institutional violence against children. Loud Fence does so upon institutional fences at the level of the streetscape, while the AOM does so by curating a museum space that honours the experiences of childhood 'Care'. Seeking to decentre the state from this analysis, I demonstrate how such examples enliven the fast and slow violence of child abuse and neglect, and the role of non-state actors when it comes to the recalibration of collective memory. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Drawing on the threefold categorisation of memory as antagonistic, cosmopolitan and agonistic, proposed by Anna Cento Bull and Hans Hansen, the article examines contemporary memory activism in the Republic of Moldova and how it contributes to creating historical narratives. Through an analysis of two memory initiatives, namely 'The Last Address' and 'Stolpersteine', designed to memorialise victims of Soviet repression and atrocities committed by the Romanian and Nazi German forces, respectively, the article uncovers the many challenges facing memory activists in Moldova where there is limited openness about these periods in recent history. Instead, different versions of the past and suppression of painful truths are subservient to contemporary political agendas. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article addresses the protest against the 2019 Nobel Prize in Literature to Peter Handke as an example of transnational memory activism. It analyzes from a transnational mobilization perspective how activists achieved a globally visible protest in Stockholm and what role memory played in the protest mobilization and framing. Genocide survivors and former refugees, human rights activists, journalists, and academics formed a transnational protest coalition. In this way, they drew international attention to their outrage at the honoring of an author who is criticized for denying the Bosnian genocide. The analysis shows that memories of the violent dissolution of Yugoslavia and genocide united the diverse protesters as a "memory community" and shaped their framing. The protesters warned of the potential repercussions of the Nobel Prize to Handke for the internationalization and normalization of genocide denial. They argued that locally, Serb nationalist politicians can find legitimation in it for divisive politics. Moreover, they put the prize in a larger context of globally rising right extremism and islamophobia that find inspiration in the very Serb nationalist ideology and its propagators of the 1990s conflict. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

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Transitional justice in Spain is still an ongoing process. This article examines the impact of memory laws and the rise of the radical right on transitional justice measures and the historical memory movement in Spain. It contends that the continued application of the 46/1977 Amnesty Law and the campaigning by radical right party Vox to repeal memory laws left a legal vacuum that precipitated interventions by memory activist groups. It is argued that these protest actions are a form of advocacy for participatory transitional justice. The article first focuses on Andalusia's 2017 memory law and the rise of Vox in the region. Subsequently, it examines the effect of the state's Democratic Memory Law (2022) on memory and justice measures and argues that both bottom-up approaches by civil society organizations and top-down measures by state actors are essential to transform Spain into a society anchored in the five pillars of transitional justice. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Art accompanies demonstrations, deriving motifs from them and strengthening the sense of community by developing a collective imaginary. In times of repression, violence and censorship during the Chilean dictatorship, the interdisciplinary artistic collective Colectivo Acciones de Arte (1979–83) transformed the streets into their exhibition space. Decades later, the collective Delight Lab paid tribute to CADA. The connection between the two collectives is approached from a mnemonic perspective. The research design focuses on memory activism showing how the recurrence of certain images from the past contributes to empower contemporary movements. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article presents the results of a study of two recent Latin American cases of counter-monumental interventions initiated by feminist and dissident actors: the intervention Amor y Furia in Santiago de Chile and the creation of La Glorieta de las Mujeres que Luchan in Mexico City. The analysis of the two cases is empirically based on a combination of social media publications and interviews with central actors conducted during fieldwork in both cities. The analysis demonstrates how the interventions made visible and enriched the conflicts of memory that stem from the traditional monumentalization of national histories, whilst fortifying feminist and dissident movements through an exposure of the continuity of their demands. Based on this combined analysis of the interventions' aesthetic representations of patriarchal violence on a variety of temporal levels and their role in the reappropriation of public space, we argue that both interventions are in their own way expressions of what we have chosen to call ch'ixi memory activism; an affective, cathartic and aesthetically cacophonous practice through which long-lasting injustices are exposed in the public space. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

'Bella ciao' is one of the best-known partisan songs of the Italian anti-fascist Resistance (1943–5) and is part of the repertoire of protest of many movements across the globe. In 2018, the song was revived by its use in the popular TV series La casa de papel. This article examines how 'Bella ciao' is adopted by activists worldwide. It does so by analyzing the song through the concept of 'portability': the capacity of a cultural artifact to be a model that can be adapted to different contexts. After an examination of 'Bella ciao''s historical uses, the article focuses on the song's feminist versions for supporting different causes and in particular abortion rights. The reuses of the song speak of memory in terms of not only a product – what we remember – but also a process : the creative use of the cultural legacy of past movements for the shaping of new stories. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This edited transcript of conversations among a group of scholars and practitioners is the culmination of a multi-year, multi-platform dialogue intended to capture the work and motivations of memory activists towards addressing both historical justice and current social and political needs of Asian American communities. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This research essay contributes to the special issue "Decolonizing European Colonial Heritage in Urban Spaces" by examining memory activist art projects focused on three heritage sites in Warsaw from the perspective of the "decolonial option" as conceived by Madina Tlostanova. The essay's theoretical framework draws from memory studies and critical heritage studies by applying the notions of memory activism, heritage repression, reframing and re-emergence, and communities of implication. The empirical cases involve The Józef Rotblat Institute for Disarmament of Culture and Abolition of War (by Krzysztof Wodiczko and Jarosław Kozakiewicz, 2016); The Próżna Project (curated by Krystyna Piotrowska, 2005–12); The Footbridge Was There (by Adam X, 2007); (...) Ellipsis (by Anna Baumgart and Agnieszka Kurant, 2009); A Footbridge of Memory (by Tomasz Lec and Krzysztof Pasternak, 2011); and photographic interventions Palace LX (by Błażej Pindor, 2014) and PKiN (by Jacek Fota, 2015). In all those critical artistic projects the essay identifies a characteristic duality: not only do they address the legacies of foreign dependencies, but in addition, and with an eye on the future, seek to destabilize nation-oriented essentialist interpretations of those dependencies. The essay claims that such a dual decolonial approach constitutes a relevant critical heuristic tool for studying other cases in which the nationalistic framing of heritage and memory is the strongest decolonial response to the fall of empires and to their aftermaths. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Taking Timor-Leste and Aceh, Indonesia, as case studies, this article examines the spaces that are imagined and created by activist-led commemorations of conflict-related violence. Focusing on recent commemorations of the Liquica Church Massacre in Timor-Leste and Simpang KKA in Aceh, it uncovers how these memory spaces are shaped and constrained by the interplay between the globally circulating discourse of transitional justice and the power dynamics resulting from the respective peace settlements. At the same time, it posits that these examples of memory activism contain creative possibilities for encouraging public debate and democratic participation, and for locally grounded forms of mourning. This is due to the multiple, dynamic, relational, spaces that emerge from the embodied encounters of those present at the commemorations. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Inspired by the life and work of the late anthropologist Nancy Abelmann (1959–2016), this essay reflects upon public evocations of human vulnerability as central to understanding recent cultural phenomena and political transformations leading up to and during the Candlelight Revolution in South Korea. In this regard, how did the color vivid yellow come to define both spaces of protest and markers of dissident identity? Considering the prevalence of yellow ribbons, yellow balloons, yellow butterflies, and yellow paper lifeboats, what does it mean for such objects to have been circulated and recirculated in layered metaphorical assemblages that constituted new forms of public memory and new practices of political mobilization? This article addresses both the massive, peaceful Candlelight protests of 2016–17 that took place in downtown Seoul and the decade-long peace movement centered on Jeju Island's Gangjeong Village in order to theorize a vital politics of fragility that has imbued influential narratives, activist coalitions, and the material culture of protest in South Korea. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]