We started the day by listening to Uilleam Blacker exposing the different approaches to cultural memory. One particular aspect we found interesting was the difference between “archived” and “functionalised” memory.
However, the part of the lecture that we most discussed as a group was the national bias in cultural memory, especially regarding the issue of collaboration during World War II. What emerged from the discussion was that there was no ‘generalised’ European memory yet because Pols, Hungarians, Italians, the French (etc.) know only little of other countries’ involvement in collaboration and focus their remembrance on the actions their nation took at the time.
After the morning lecture, the group headed to the student centre to continue working on various projects: while some of us finalised their blog entries about Saami history, others made progress on the film by choosing specific editing methods (e.g. split the screen to show simultaneous actions of searching for material sources retracing Saami history in some of London’s most renowned sites).
Later in the afternoon we had our language session with Riitta. We revised the conjugations of several fundamental verbs (e.g. to be, to want, to drink, to eat), we expanded our vocabulary of Saami cuisine, and finally we started working on the demonstrative pronouns.After the language session, the group continued to work on the documentary. Some of us focused on the technical aspect of film-making whereas others organised the intellectual message conveyed by the documentary through the writing of a documentary script. We also decided to present the title of the documentary through a short, animated sequence showing the shrinking of Sápmi (the land of the Saami
European London 