Using Emplaced Ethnography, Mobility, and Listening to Research Memory

Abstract

This chapter explores two examples of collective national remembrance that occur in the Netherlands on 4 and 5 May annually. A visual and sound-based ethnography was used to better understand the relationship between the practice of commemoration and its affect (Anderson 2004). On 4 May, the sounds of a silence march—through the streets of Amsterdam to the Dam Square—were recorded and complimented by video grabs of the march’s participants and onlookers. On 5 May, sounds and atmospheres (cf. Sumartojo 2015) were recorded at one of Holland’s biggest ‘freedom festivals’, named Bevrijdingspop, in Haarlem. We highlight how by paying more attention to the sounds (and images) rather than solely to text, we better understood the role they played in the co-constitution of commemorative spaces.