Co-creation and arts-based approaches for re-narrating Controversial Cultural Heritage Mnemosyne Atlas as participatory research practice in CIRCE Project

The aim of this paper is to analyse the role of co-creation in developing research practices that re-narrate cultural heritage linked to controversial events, figures, and memories from a decolonial perspective. The paper is presented within the framework of the ongoing CIRCE Project, which brings together researchers and artists from Europe and Africa, to work around three interconnected thematic axes: Judaism and anti-Judaism, the Islamic and Ottoman legacies, and Blackness and slavery. In this context, which strategies can we use to handle such controversial topics without reproducing the epistemic hierarchies that shaped them? The contribution focuses on the experimental use of the methodology of Mnemosyne - Warburg Atlas as a collaborative research tool. Warburg methodology is adopted for shaping visual paths around a guiding image. The Atlas panels are conceived as agonistic fields where images, previously cut, isolated, and removed from their original context, are combined into a new visual field, allowing discontinuities, tensions, and contradictions to emerge. The new combination generates unexpressed meanings and representations, proving to be a powerful research strategy for CIRCE scopes. In this paper, examples of panels, built by Art History master students (University of Macerata) around different controversial topics related to the project, will be presented and commented to showcase and demonstrate the potential of Warburg Atlas in opening space for negotiation, challenging mainstream perception and narratives. Capitalising methods and results from this experience, presented as a trial for future analysis, CIRCE project moves a step forward including artists in building an Atlas of Controversial Cultural Heritage. Artists from East Europe and Africa bring their own perspective into co-creation activities. The ongoing work with artists in CIRCE will be presented as well, stressing the importance of grafting arts-based methods into the original warburgian approach to enhance its potential of unleashing new visual narratives rooted in dialogue, reciprocity, creativity and decolonial perspectives.