Affiliation:
1. University of the Arts London, UK
Abstract
In this chapter, the author explores how artistic practice can contribute to understanding the local concept of desmemòria. The forgetting that was demanded of the population of Spain during the Transition has become naturalised. The resistance to communicating and repairing the damage done to the population between 1936 and 1975 has made it difficult to revert the effects of the Pact of Forgetting, creating a compressed space for memory in the public sphere, pushing it further into the private, where it risks disappearing permanently. Through a photographic practice, the author responds to the history of the flooded village of Faió and map the territory of desmemòria and the voices found at the edge. This chapter deploys Deleuze and Guattari's minority to explore strategies of resistance and creation in the face of unmemory. Working on a family archive, the author maps the gaps that have resulted from a history of protracted silence and imagine new relationships between minority, photography, and memory.