Climate crisis and environmental tragic accidents of immense consequences, unexpected disruptions in funding sources, financial crisis, transnational and international military conflicts, political pressure regarding discurses and heritage materials, easily and accessible human-like manipulative tools… This is the context affecting memory institutions, not only in less developed countries but also in countries traditionally regarded as “safe” and “stable”. No institution is prepared for this reality.
When an institution, in any geography, faces a critical situation—let alone various simultaneous concurring crises— it is never fully prepared, because preparation, however extensive, is designed for more or less expected risk situations (floods, fires, infestations, etc.), never when a “perfect storm” happens. Despite the extent of the preparation, when a critical situation occurs, cooperation with external entities is paramount. Depending on the size of the crisis, this externality takes on different scales.
With this paper, I propose to start a debate around the need to create a trans-institutional, possibly transnational, entity that can be activated in situations that sometimes far exceed the intervention capacity of each institution, even country, alone. Regarding Sound and Audio-visual documentary heritage IASA can / should have a word to say and a role to assume.
