The article explores “empty migrant rooms” in Central Albania and their photographic image as seen through an anthropology of absence. In which way can a dialogic work between ethnographer and photographer reveal the local meanings of such spaces as lieux de mémoire commenting on temporary absences and prospective presences? The authors explore the local terminology, the affective care and the social interaction generated by and around such rooms. It is argued that such spaces are not only fluctuating between the material and the immaterial, but are also characterized by emotional ambiguities. Their local relevance is referred to as “absence signifiers”, as material substitutes for physical bodies of flesh and blood, as “memory boxes” of the immaterial. The article also discusses ethical questions which concern the very nature and the preservability of “migrant’s traces”.
Authors :
Eckehard Pistrick (text)
Martin Luther University Halle-Wittenberg, Germany
eckehard.pistrick@musikwiss.uni-halle.de
&
Florian Bachmeier (photo and text)
n-Ost Network for Reporting on Eastern Europe, Germany
Eckehard Pistrick, membre du Crisalide vient de publier un ouvrage inédit, traitant d’un aspect peu étudié des migrations. Celles-ci sont abordées sous l’angle de la musique, lien ténu qui raccorde ceux qui sont partis à leur pays d’origine. Une façon originale de souligner les effets de l’absence dans le rapport à soi, à l’autre et au pays d’origine.
Texte de présentation :
Migration studies is an area of increasing significance in musicology as in other disciplines. How do migrants express and imagine themselves through musical practice? How does music help them to construct social imaginaries and to cope with longings and belongings? In this study of migration music in postsocialist Albania, Eckehard Pistrick identifies links between sound, space, emotionality and mobility in performance, provides new insights into the controversial relationship between sound and migration, and sheds light on the cultural effects of migration processes. Central to Pistrick’s approach is the essential role of emotionality for musical creativity which is highlighted throughout the volume: pain and longing are discussed not as a traumatising end point, but as a driving force for human action and as a source for cultural creativity. Continuer la lecture de A lire : Performing Nostalgia – Migration Culture and Creativity in South Albania→
Collectif de recherche interdisciplinaire sur l'absence et les liens diasporiques dans l'espace euro-méditerranéen
