The construction of memory vol.2

Abstract

Due to a large number of high-grade articles submitted to V!RUS in August 2017, the journal's Editorial Committee decided to keep the theme of The Construction of Memory in the next issue, number 16 [semester 01.2018], thus allowing the publication of more selected works, in two consecutive volumes.

The following text, from the call for papers of July 2017, expresses the current understanding and expectations of the Editorial Committee and Nomads.usp researchers on the subject.

The construction of memory

Memory is understood in several areas of knowledge as the ability to store and restore information, or the support of such storage, or the preserved information itself. It is therefore not difficult to consider a film, a photograph, a map or a gravestone as being, per se, records of information accessed immediately when viewed. Less obvious is to identify this character in buildings, city spaces, urban or rural forest areas, and social, cultural, and political manifestations.

As an instrument of power, preserved memory often prioritizes the values defended by dominant groups - political, religious or economic - aided by the media, sometimes elaborating false truths that become part of historical discourses and school books. The memory is what allows a nation to build its history through processes marked by consensus and disagreements about what should be, in the future, their references and rememberings.

The V!RUS journal aims to bring together reflections on the memory construction processes nowadays. The role of the so-called big data in the constitution of records that influence opinions and worldviews; The place of buildings, objects and physical spaces considered of historical, artistic, architectural or landscape interest; The risks of gentrification in urban requalification processes involving historical environments; The contributions of the visual, scenic and digital arts as both record and criticism of memory; The decision-making processes on what should be rescued and preserved for future generations and in what ways; The criteria for choosing what is recorded and what is omitted in the increasingly numberless digital mappings; The place of the values of social groups historically dominated, as in Brazil, indigenous people, blacks, as well as women and the various gender orientations; The history of migrant populations and the preservation of their cultural values; The status quo of the formulation and execution of cultural public policies and the consolidation of the values they induce; Social cartography as a stimulator of processes capable of encouraging the collective construction of the history of a community; The urban master plans and the action of the various actors in the cities that define the preservation or destruction of physical and social environments; The contribution of information technology in operations of storage and information restoration are topics of great interest for this call.

In the near or distant future, what are we going to remember? In what ways have these remembrances been built, and by whom? What are the new collaborative forms of collective memory construction? The answers to these questions lie in the dynamic interweaving of the issues outlined above, understood from distinct but complementary perspectives - historical, technological, political, economic, artistic, environmental, behavioral, social, among others.

We are also interested in reports and reflections on technical aspects of the construction of memory, such as the ephemerality of digital media and new repositories of memory; The sense of recovering constructive techniques and popular knowledge in several areas; The use of BIM platforms aimed at preserving and sharing information about the design, execution and lifecycle of the built environments; The role of film archives and cinematheques, libraries, mediatheques and the like; The research and teaching methods employed in areas that work directly with the construction of memory, such as history, geography, archeology, museology, information science, education, social sciences, but also cinema, architecture, urbanism, music and design.

IMPORTANT DATES

July 2017: Call for papers
August 27th, 2017: Deadline for receipt of submissions
December 2017: Release of V!RUS 15 "The construction of memory vol. 1"
June 2018: Release of V!RUS 16 "The construction of memory vol. 2"