What is it? 


Reimagining Europe is the first dynamic open-access digital platform which integrates a database of artists and artworks that address European postcolonial memory in five areas - performing arts, visual arts, film, literature and music. The database brings together more than 400 international contemporary artists, more than 1000 works and thousands of critical and bibliographical references in various digital media, accompanied by search systems. These are artists, musicians and writers who, despite not having necessarily lived through colonial times, namely Belgian, French and Portuguese, in territories such as Algeria, Congo, Angola, Mozambique, Guinea-Bissau, S. Tomé and Príncipe or Cape Verde, manifest themselves as heirs of these family and public memories. From their works, these artists reflect and question these heritages in contemporary European time and space, offering us an urgent and unavoidable rereading of the imagination of a contemporary and future Europe, for which many of them are building new possibilities of living differently in common. 




How was it done? 


This database was built through primary data, collected in the scope of an extensive research work, namely interviews, visits to ateliers, exhibitions, galleries, cultural activities; and secondary data, in a thorough collection of information attentive to media coverage and critical literature. The innovative, inter-artistic and interdisciplinary curatorship offers us a new cartography of European colonial memory by confronting us with artists and works that are at the forefront of the European postcolonial debate and that are defining new forms of a post-national and post-colonial European citizenship. 



Who made and who funded? 


The database presents a motivated curation that results from in-depth research initiated within the project Memoirs - Children of Empire and European Post-memories, (European Research Council (ERC) under the European Union's Horizon 2020 Community Framework Programme for Research & Innovation (no. 648624)) and consolidated in the framework of the project Maps - European Post-memories: a post-colonial cartography (FCT - PTDC/LLTOUT/7036/2020), both developed at the Centre for Social Studies of the University of Coimbra, in partnership with the company Sistemas do Futuro, directed by Fernando Cabral. 


The general coordination is by Margarida Calafate Ribeiro, and the artistic coordination is by António Pinto Ribeiro. Besides the coordinators, the research was carried out by the researchers of the Memoirs project: António Sousa Ribeiro, Fátima da Cruz Rodrigues, Felipe Cammaert, Fernanda Vilar, Roberto Vecchi, Paulo de Medeiros and the collaborating researchers Bruno Machado and Vitor Belanciano. The database integrated in the Reimagining Europe platform is presented in three languages: Portuguese, French and English. The translation into French was partially done by Felipe Cammaert; the translation into English is by Margarida Bonifácio. The executive management of the database is by Bruno Machado. The project management is the responsibility of Hélia Santos and Jessica Santos. The implementation and technical management is the responsibility of the company Sistemas do Futuro. 



Public use mode 


The database Reimagining Europe platform results from the fundamental mission of the scientific community to share research results beyond the academia. It was built from elements already available in digital media and it is based on a partnership between researchers and companies specialised in the use of new technologies to communicate scientific knowledge through open access digital platforms, meeting the international directives and recommendations on the use of digital media in the area of culture and heritage and the challenges posed to social sciences by the European science programme Horizon 2020 and the European Action Plan for Culture 2019-2020.


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