MEMORY OF THE CITY AND INFORMATION MEDIATION IN THE PICTORIAL SERIES 'PARAHYBA THEN AND NOW'
Keywords:
memory of the city, self-memory, cultural heritage, information mediation, Visual Arts EducationAbstract
This article reports on a Visual Arts teaching experience with ninth-grade students at the Nelson Clemens Cordeiro Guedes Municipal School in the Vila Nova de Cajá community, municipality of Caldas Brandão, Paraíba, Brazil. The project, titled "Parahyba Ontem," drew on the pictorial series "Parahyba Ontem e Hoje" by the painter Rodrigues Lima, widely circulated on Telemar telephone cards during the 1990s and 2000s, to promote the visual reconstruction, through painting and photographic intervention, of demolished buildings and monuments from the historic center of João Pessoa and from Caldas Brandão itself. Theoretically, the study articulates the concepts of city memory, self-memory, and cultural heritage, examining them through the epistemology of Information Science regarding mediation, document, and information regimes. Methodologically, this is a qualitative, applied study configured as action research in a school context, combining participant observation, iconographic document analysis, and student-authored reports. Results indicate that the artistic manipulation of photographs and the painting of vanished façades functioned as mediation devices between individual and collective memory, strengthening, among the students, processes of belonging, historical awareness, and appreciation of Paraíba's architectural heritage, culminating in a collective exhibition open to the school community and the general public.