"Memory Lab": Students produce podcast to prevent forgetting

2021-01-25 Lüneburg/Ravensbrück. As part of German history, the Nazism era is also the subject of historical-political education. But how can memory work function if the exchange with contemporary witnesses will no longer be possible in the foreseeable future? In the seminar "Memory Lab", 20 students from Leuphana University Lüneburg explored new, artistic forms of remembrance. The seminar was organised by musicologist Prof. Dr. Monika Schoop in collaboration with the Ravensbrück Memorial.

The project resulted in a self-produced podcast that looks at the question of a new culture of remembrance from different perspectives: How does memory transfer work? What relevance do places of remembrance have in the digital age? What role do contemporary witnesses play? And how is and has remembrance been through art? Particular attention will also be paid to the question of what impact the Corona pandemic and the associated turn to digital formats has had on remembrance work.

To approach the topic, the students participated in workshops of the project "Silence is no longer here because of us" of the Ravensbrück Memorial. Ravensbrück, the site of the largest women's concentration camp during the Nazi era, illustrates the significance of the project. "How can we shape the future if we don't understand the past?" asked initiator Dan Wolf. He originally launched the project in 2011 under the title "Sound in the Silence" together with the Hamburg district & cultural centre MOTTE and gave students individual access to historical events.

Last year, for the first time, students were able to deal with this question in workshops and learn about forms of integrating history and memory into various art forms. Digitally networked, the Leuphana students worked on artistic forms of remembrance via video conference with the Berlin rapper Lena Stoehrfaktor and poetry slammer Aicha Ben Mansour.

What the students took away from these workshops and the seminar was processed into four podcast episodes. On 27 January 2021, the International Day of Remembrance of the Victims of the Holocaust, the results of the work will be presented. The podcast "Memory Lab" will be available on Spotify, Apple Podcast and the YouTube channel of the Dr. Hildegard Hansche Foundation.

 

Contact:
Prof.' Dr.' Monika E. Schoop