...a fertile imaginary world...

This site is dedicated to a multi-disciplinary project that focuses on the representation of the colonial period. This still unexplored chapter of history is a fertile imaginary world, whose contemporary forms of expression make up an immaterial heritage that is shared today by former colonisers and formerly colonised peoples, in the old British, French, Portuguese, Spanish and Japanese empires.

Although an understanding of colonisation – and, in particular, conquest – is essential for anyone wishing to understand the world as it is today, the question remains taboo, giving rise to all kinds of fears and half-truths.

His aim is to foster a process of coming to terms with the colonial past.

...a multi-disciplinary international project...

The project results of the collaboration between artists, researchers, exhibition organisers, critics, writers, etc., are all trying to define the features of this memory in the making.

The Broken Memory Project is a platform. As such it is composed of several branches: Worshops, Research Programs and Surveys, Exhibitions, Publications, and other Cultural Programs.

...contemporary art and colonial past...

The common thread of this project is made up of the imaginary representations that are crystallised by booty from the colonial wars, and the symbolic role that it plays at a contemporary level. The empty space that was left by the loss of these objects, the "gap in the memory" and the way in which this "gap" has been filled is our central questioning. Our aim is to highlight the imaginary productions to which colonisation, a complex phase in the history of humanity, gave rise (and still gives rise today), by gathering together some "shards of memory" in the form of colonial war trophies.

While some people cling to an imaginary, idealized past, others prefer to forget it completely: as the quotation from Borges used here as an epigraph reminds us. Our intention is to capture, in all their diversity, the expressions of this history which, today, seem to be coming back to the forefront. We will be looking at elitist as well as at popular forms, whether academic or not, artistic, literary and scientific productions, produced in ex-colonising states as well as in the former colonies.

This site may be visited as a kind of virtual exhibition, a foretaste of a number of real exhibitions, taking in works of art, archive pictures, films, etc.

The site is also intended to be a means of exchanging information. A forum, open to all, is available to anyone who would like to react, make comments or recount memories.

The Broken Memory is a CURIO project :