The workshop refers to the concept of the memory of sites and seeks to combine the idea of collective memory with that of thassology, a maritime history. It intends to go beyond the comprehension of collective memories as a realm of stable constitution and to stimulate thinking about permanent flux and change as their inherent features. The sea, sometimes considered a space without history, as a fluid ‘non-site’ – to speak with Marc Augé –, can be perceived as figure, material, and media which allows us to interrogate identities, cultures, and societies in their global intertwinings.
We thus operate on the methodological ground elaborated by Pierre Nora, Pierre Bourdieu, Harald Welzer, and others. However, we also ask to what extent those approaches maintain today their topicality considering the perspective on the sea as a realm of fluctuation. As a global and non-permanent place, the sea, seen as a cultural concept, has been widely discussed in recent debates on maritime history, entangled history, and histoire croisée. Also, in environmental art history and history, we perceive the sea as a field of agency. As the sea always encompasses a global and planetary perspective, we examine which spaces of negotiation and discourses prevent or promote processes of conceptualisation, perpetuation, and framing of collective memories. Therefore, we would like to ask: are maritime memory sites suitable for understanding transit processes and spaces such as, e.g. migration and diaspora? In these terms, we are looking for counternarratives, new narratives, events, artefacts, and places or sites of collective memories shaped by the maritime space to shed light on other social and local communities, events, and artefacts. Regarding our approach to the shared cultural heritage of the Baltic Sea Region, we are interested in fractures, blurs, and oblivion – in the common and the divisive elements that foster the understanding of regional trajectories in a global framework.
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