e-book
"Under the Cobblestones ... Exhibiting May ‘68"
"Under the Cobblestones ... Exhibiting May ‘68"
While we were designing the exhibition dedicated to May '68, we realised that the way it was mostly approached and presented in the usual ceremonial events focused on the most popular names, on the multicoloured posters and the impressive pictures taken by the photographers of the agencies of the time. As we mention in the book, "The relation, though, of our exhibition to the Conference of the School of Social Sciences, of the University of the Aegean, entitled "Social Sciences today. Dilemmas and outlook beyond the crisis" gave us the opportunity and forced us -at the same time- to search further the enormous amount of the beautiful black and white pictures, the imaginative slogans, the iconic posters and the numerous and contradicting testimonies. And all that, in order to realise that what we faced was something more complicated -socially, chronologically and geographically- than we initially expected. As it happens in all interesting stories, one cannot easily trace the "good" and the 'bad" guys, one cannot safely say when something "began" and when it "finished".
The book is divided in three sections. In the first one, the way one studies the recent past, the way the May '68 events and the collective memory are usually managed, as well as the ways different social movements are exhibited in different cultural spaces is discussed. In the second part, our own exhibition idea is presented, while analysing both the various narrative tools we used and the ways we chose to present the people, the events and the documentation. The third and last part of the book is dedicated to the exhibition we designed and implemented in 2019. Through detailed descriptions, the reader may make an imaginary visit in the exhibition and comprehend the reasons that led us to each and every one designing and narrative decision we made. Thus, this chapter has no relation to the usual exhibition catalogues, although it presents the largest part of the material used for the exhibits -including interactive tools for a better view-, as well as the detailed method we followed in decision making.
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