The Difficulties of Interpreting Mediterranean Voices: Exhibiting Intangibles Using New Technologies

Within the framework of the European Union’s EuroMed Heritage II programme, 2001-2004, thirteen partners worked together with London Metropolitan University as co-ordinator within the Mediterranean Voices project. This was designed to research the intangible heritage of these cosmopolitan communities, the ‘glocalisation’ in globalisation, as made manifest through the oral testimonies of the ordinary citizens with respect to everyday life in the city. This paper investigates the tensions arising from (1) translating private interviews onto a highly public medium such as is the IT database without producing ‘reification’ (2) the value of oral history in the museum and how it can be used to re-value intangible heritage (3) the difficulties of exhibiting information on intangible heritage, based on implicit background knowledge, and designed as ‘triggers’ of memory and reminiscences, to audiences lacking the requisite contextualisation, either for spatial reasons (people from mainland Spain or other countries, new immigrant communities) or for motives associated with time (people of the younger generations who have not been exposed to the reality exhibited). The paper also, and most importantly, analyses (4) the role of the museum as an ‘activator’ of memory and a centre for discussion and promotion of community identity, sense of place and belonging as opposed to its modernist conception as an educator of the ‘uncultured’ masses and archive of encyclopaedic wisdom.