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Research project

BABE - Bodies across borders: Oral and visual memory in Europe and beyond

This study of new forms of European identity, in an increasingly diasporic world, engaged both native and ‘new’ Europeans.

This project is funded by the European Research Council (ERC)

The BABE project is funded by the European Research Council under the European Union’s Seventh Framework Programme (FP/2007-2013) / ERC Grant Agreement n. 295854

The project aimed to explore the changes induced by global mobility into visual memories of Europe, focusing on visual art production and on the traces of memory produced by mobile people (oral and visual interviews, maps, objects, drawings). It compared two nations, Italy and The Netherlands, chosen for both their similarities and differences in relation to past and present movements of people, as this 'tension' allows for a productive comparative study.

Offering a critical account of stories and practices of movement in, out an through Europe, the research aims to shed new light on the multiplicity of meanings of mobility by examining the interlinked histories of emigration, colonialism and immigration that for long were considered as separate fields of scholar enquiry. In this perspective, new and old forms of intersubjectivity – across both spaces and temporalities – represent also a starting point for a critical assessment of differential mobility regimes and the ways in which stillness and motion are spatialised.

Publications

Books and Journals

  • Dissonant Heritages and Memories in Contemporary Europe
    By Tuuli Lähdesmäki, Luisa Passerini, Sigrid Kaasik-Krogerus, Iris van Huis
    Part of the Palgrave Studies in Cultural Heritage and Conflict book series (PSCHC), DOI: 10.1007/978-3-030-11464-0
  • Bodies Across Borders. Oral And Visual Memory in Europe and Beyond’ (BABE): a conversation with Luisa Passerini, Donna Gabaccia, and Franca Iacovetta
    By Luisa Passerini, Donna Gabaccia & Franca Iacovetta
    Women’s History Review, 25:3(2016), 458-469, DOI: 10.1080/09612025.2015.1071564 You can access the full article also in EUI Repository CADMUS
  • Conversations on visual memory
    By Luisa Passerini
    You can access the full article also in EUI Repository CADMUS
  • Memorie migranti. Visualità, sentimenti e generazioni in una prospettiva transnazionale
    By Graziella Bonansea
  • Is the Mediterranean a White Italian–European Sea? The multiplication of borders in the production of historical subjectivity, By Gabriele Proglio Interventions, 20:3 (2018), 406-427, DOI: 10.1080/1369801X.2017.1421025 

 

Blog posts

“The following posts were written for the Babe Blog, which was published on an external platform and was active between January 2016 and May 2018, during the period of the research project”.

Luisa Passerini

  • Passerini, Luisa. The BABE Project (blog). “Conference ‘Borders in the European Memories’. Frankfurt am Oder, March 5–6, 2015.”
  • Passerini, Luisa. The BABE Project (blog). “Bouchra Khalili, Foreign Office, 2015.”
  • Passerini, Luisa. The BABE Project (blog). “Orality, Visuality, and Memory: Wael Shawky at the Fondazione Merz, Torino, Italy, 2016.”
  • Passerini, Luisa. The BABE Project (blog). “Crossings by Land, Water and Air, opening lecture by Ursula Biemann for Biennale Democrazia, Turin, Italy, March 25, 2015”.
  • Passerini, Luisa. The BABE Project (blog). “Presentantion of Bodies Across Borders: Oral and visual Memory in Europe and Beyond”.
  • Passerini, Luisa. The BABE Project (blog). “Luisa Passerini’s introduction to “Is another Europe Possible?” by Fabrice Olivier Dubosc

Graziella Bonansea

  • Bonansea, Graziella. The BABE Project (blog). “Tra i luoghi del margine. Fotografie e immagini di una Polveriera dismessa nell’area torinese”.

Liliana Ellena

  • Ellena, Liliana. The BABE Project (blog). “Das Haus der 28 Türen, Bewegung Nurr, Berlin”, 2016

Giada Giustetto

  • Giustetto, Giada. The BABE Project (blog). “Reflections and actions around the World Refugee Day”, 2016
  • Giustetto, Giada. The BABE Project (blog). “Color Difference?”, 2016
  • Giustetto, Giada. The BABE Project (blog). “Turin’s Pan-African Festival 2015”

Leslie Hernández Nova

  • Leslie Hernández Nova. The BABE Project (blog). “El uso de la visualidad para el estudio de las migraciones entre Europa y América Latina, 2015”

Gabriele Proglio

  • Proglio, Gabriele. The BABE Project (blog). “MoAD: Stories in Fragments between Visual and Visuality”, 2016

  • Proglio, Gabriele. The BABE Project (blog). “Exhibitions as visual mapping of knowledge”, 2015
  • Proglio, Gabriele. The BABE Project (blog). “Mapping Lampedusa: cinema and “emotional geography”, 2017

 Milica Trakilović

  • Trakilović, Milica. The BABE Project (blog). “Drawing Conclusions Symposium, Utrecht, June 24, 2015”
  • Trakilović, Milica. The BABE Project (blog). “We Are Here: A Demand for Visibility through Artistic and Collective Organizing”, 2016
  • Trakilović, Milica. The BABE Project (blog). “Dialogue between Oral History Projects? Looking back at the Ongekend Bijzonder Symposium“, 2016

Iris van Huis

  • van Huis, Iris. The BABE Project (blog). “Refugees and art in the “Bijlmer-bajes”: A visit to a former prison becoming a creative 

 

Click here to see more about the BABE Research Project, including: About, past activities, people & media