ABSTRACT
In this chapter, we describe the ways in which local history-making and the performative elements of memory work have shaped our work of community engagement in the village. It tries to describe the dialectics of memory and forgetting, and point to possible ways of addressing these through artistic research projects that establish temporary spaces for the co-creation of knowledge. Participatory techniques, such as these we describe further down, may open the way for increased control over knowledge and produce the conditions for unexpected ethnographic encounters. Rather than acting as evocation techniques from a dominant, all-knowing research team, they create the conditions of seeing knowledge about the past as something that is constantly contested, negotiated, discussed, but also something that is agreed upon, shared and actively employed to build community and identity. Such ethnographic encounters in art research may be fruitful but also may prove unsettling for the assumptions and expectations of researchers and artists alike.
