Personal histories/collective biography: ideas for a biography of place suggested by two local exhibitions of personal migration histories

Abstract

The Migration Memories exhibitions were a collection of migration biographies, rather than a collective biography, but the ways in which local people engaged with them and articulated their responses them reflected understandings of the collective. One strand of responses highlighted collective practices and understandings of cultural diversity, suggesting strong distinctions between the ways in which Lightning Ridge and Robinvale ‘do’ and express their cultural diversity. Another strand of responses concerned the exhibition as an experience of engagement with fellow residents and suggested an active inquiry about ‘you’ and ‘me’ and our relationship in this place. Nezaket Shulz in Lightning Ridge spoke most eloquently in these terms: ‘It’s like I think you have walked into a huge living room and there are all these people who have all known each other and who thought they knew each other. But... [the exhibition] actually connected some of them more to each other by reintroducing them to each other… Even though one has known them, but never actually known what their connection to something else - to the bigger picture - was.’2 In this paper I’m working with both sets of responses; those that highlighted practices of cultural diversity and those that reflect the story-making of collective biography – not just putting myself in the picture but drawing (and re-drawing) the picture of us. Show more