Toursoglou Papalexandridou, Danai

Commoning is constructed by the relationality of people- who remember. How can the act of collectively remembering further support relationality and commoning? What novel understandings on the potential and scalability of commoning do these plural memories propose? This paper includes evidence from research-action methodologies based on memory as implemented in Boston (USA), Medellin (Colombia), Chios (Greece) and Lisbon (Portugal). The four cases are based on processes of interrelation driven by the act of remembering and sharing emotional and embodied memories. They include community initiatives, academics, artists and inhabitants. The process followed in each geo-sociohistorical context highly depends on the local heritage and the processes and tools followed by the same communities. The act of inviting individuals to remember and narrate as part of research and action methodologies led to the identification of the deeper reasons that drive connections as well as the creation of commoning processes among academia and communities. We collectively identified a correlation among the aspects that exist and persist in memory and the sustainability and/ or transition of processes. Commoning, when read through the lived experiences and emotions of the individuals that form part of it has the potential to reveal an understanding of the will to common as the aspect that enables the transition of commoning processes within and across places and times. Additionally, the sequence followed in the methodological pathway- remembering, narrating, creating collective knowledge and claims and acting together- supports and sustains collective processes among academia, artists and communities in all of the cases presented. Memory in this article is, thus, presented as a core component that motivates individuals and groups to common and at the same time as a source of information on how and why to do it.