Researcher Giusy Pappalardo, from the University of Catania (Italy), was in Portugal to carry out a Sociomuseological Residency at the Museology Department of the Universidade Lus\u00f3fona. Between the 11th and 19th of July, she was in M\u00e9rtola where she visited the centers of the M\u00e9rtola Museum and contacted various stakeholders in the M\u00e9rtola Vila Museum project.<\/p>\n
Here we leave you her testimony:<\/p>\n
\u201cBetween M\u00e9rtola and the Alentejo communities to learn more about the social function of museums. I arrived in Alentejo from Lisbon on a hot Monday afternoon in early July 2022, one of the hottest weeks of the year. Despite the tiredness of the trip, Guilhermina’s welcome was a first note of joy and a festive introduction to my days in M\u00e9rtola, along with the sounds of nature that can still be heard along the Guadiana in Al\u00e9m Rio, where the noise of cars rarely disturbs the quiet.
\nI am an Italian researcher at the University of Catania, Sicily, and I work in the area of \u200b\u200bterritorial planning with an action research approach, from a community perspective. I am currently developing my research in sociomuseology, and for that reason I spent 3 months of residency at Universidade Lus\u00f3fona de Lisboa, recommended by a researcher and friend, Manuelina Duarte. Manuelina herself had already given me the opportunity to meet Cl\u00e1udio Torres, Susana G\u00f3mez and L\u00edgia Rafael de M\u00e9rtola, during a cycle of international webinars that we organized in the most difficult months of the covid-19 pandemic, in 2021, in which we talked about the experiences most avant-garde in the world of insurgent museologies.
\nOnce again Manuelina, while I was organizing my trip to Portugal for 2022, suggested that I spend a week in M\u00e9rtola: \u201cstaying at least a week there is important\u201d. And, in fact, my week in M\u00e9rtola \u2013 and among the shadowless streets of Alentejo \u2013 was really the minimum time to start loving. Understanding and relating to this land.
\nI arrived here with Floriane, a student of Prof. Manuelina in museology at the University of Li\u00e9ge, who will do his internship in M\u00e9rtola. Together we share the pain of the heat, the wonder of the places, the questions still open and the desire to contribute to a process of strengthening the local community that has been going on for over 40 years.
\nThe Alentejo cante, which Guilhermina continues to practice with pride and splendor along with others, immediately gave me important interpretations. \u201cPeople who sing will not die\u201d, we read at Casa do Alentejo in Lisbon, recalling the words of Michel Giacometti. It is about Cante, and also about the forms of expression and narration, there is the museology itself, understood as a direct testimony of the cultures that lived and lived in the places.
\nThe process of musealization of archeology in M\u00e9rtola communicated this important message to me, which is above all a political message. This became much clearer to me listening to the words of Cl\u00e1udio Torres, with whom I had the honor of spending time at his house, surrounded by his affections. Cl\u00e1udio and N\u00e1dia (his daughter) have long talked about the meaning of bringing to light, talking, giving space to the Islamic culture, often forgotten in the history books.
\nAnd the many visits with L\u00edgia to the in situ museums made the concept even clearer to me. \u201cIt is important to leave the finds where they are\u201d, always specifies L\u00edgia. And in my mind, the most current debates in museology come to mind in which we discuss the importance of stopping the tendency to centralize the accumulation of objects, and of impoverishing the territories already explored by the greed of the centers of power.
\nThe passion of experts and volunteers in the Archaeological field \u2013 willing to continue digging aimlessly under the very hot sun of this summer of fires and climate change \u2013
\nconfirmed to me the force of the message behind these excavations. Susana, Virg\u00edlio, others and others dedicated their lives to this place. The action of defending and narrating the heritage of M\u00e9rtola, which is both natural and cultural heritage, gave new life to a village in the Portuguese interior that, otherwise, like many other places around it, would have almost disappeared from the maps.
\nI hope to publish soon a report that can give a more structured way of reflecting on the listening and analysis process carried out in a week (in the end, very little) in this hot summer. I thank the City Council for their support in this work.
\nI hope to return to M\u00e9rtola soon, but I certainly bring to Sicily \u2013 a land very similar to the Alentejo \u2013 a very clear lesson about the social function of museums: the ability to highlight, preserve and renew narratives that would otherwise be silenced.
\nI take with me the printed images of the work of Maria Helena and the other women at the Weaving Workshop, Orlando’s passion for preserving memory in one of the most peripheral museum centers in M\u00e9rtola (Alcaria do Javazes), the care with which the museum team and other places welcomed us, orie<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Researcher Giusy Pappalardo, from the University of Catania (Italy), was in Portugal to carry out a Sociomuseological Residency at the Museology Department of the Universidade Lus\u00f3fona. Between the 11th and 19th of July, she was in M\u00e9rtola where she visited the centers of the M\u00e9rtola Museum and contacted various stakeholders in the M\u00e9rtola Vila Museum… Ler mais Between M\u00e9rtola and the Alentejo communities to learn more about the social function of museums<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":17243,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[84],"tags":[],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.museudemertola.pt\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17577"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.museudemertola.pt\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.museudemertola.pt\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.museudemertola.pt\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.museudemertola.pt\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=17577"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.museudemertola.pt\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17577\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.museudemertola.pt\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/17243"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.museudemertola.pt\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=17577"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.museudemertola.pt\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=17577"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.museudemertola.pt\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=17577"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}