Feminist Pedagogy “Practices of Remembrance”, Istanbul, October 2018

Abstract

Migrant Women’s Reminiscence Box in Frankfurt

The Federal German Migrant Women Association was founded in 2005 in Frankfurt and then expanded to more than 20 German cities. Women, coming from different geographies in Turkey, present diverse ethnical and religious identities in the association. They participate or organize demonstrations, hand out information flyers, and cooperate with local and international institutions for their common interests as they are basically part of the worker, migrant, and feminist movements. Based on their socio-political activities in the city, in 2014, migrant women were invited to the Library of Generations. It is an artistic reminiscence project to be housed in Frankfurt Historical Museum until 2105. The principle intention in the participatory museum project is to archive the history of migrant women in the perspective of documenting their struggles through the years, achievements in the present day, and goals for the future.

Archival materials in the reminiscence box—produced in a series of workshops—are basically instruments for women to tell their own stories, and it includes a short story book, choir recording, 10 years anniversary book, a short-documentary, etc. Nevertheless, posters, flyers, press releases, campaigning materials, and especially their periodical publications “Woman” represent migrant women’s memory in Germany. Additionally, the project includes two participatory exhibitions: Firstly, “ABC of Migrant Women Association: A Female Dictionary” (Cologne, 2015; Frankfurt, 2016; İstanbul, 2016; Berlin, 2017), an A to Z list of visual and textual interrogation of socially constructed words, objects, emotions, and even colors; secondly, “World from Female Perspective!” (Berlin, 2017), exposing the colorful, fighter, and collaborator environment of migrant women through photo albums, and various artistic installations. In this manner, this paper aims to discuss participatory curatorial practices in the project and archival materials representing female memory coming from Turkey and currently based in Germany.