Local Australian memory activism and the fast and slow violence of institutional abuse

Abstract

ABSTRACT This article investigates unofficial memory projects that have arisen in Australia in response to the institutional abuse of children. While the role of activists in pushing for the enactment of state responses is beginning to be understood, activist demands for recognition have taken a multitude of forms beyond this. Unofficial memory projects are indicative of this, exemplified by a diverse range of publicly situated cultural forms that re-present abuse to wider audiences. Focusing on two examples that have arisen in Australia in recent years – the grassroots phenomenon known as Loud Fence that grew out of the Victorian town of Ballarat, and the Australian Orphanage Museum that was established by Care leavers in 2023 – I examine these as examples of memory activism which generate counter-archives of institutional violence against children. Loud Fence does so upon institutional fences at the level of the streetscape, while the AOM does so by curating a museum space that honours the experiences of childhood ‘Care’. Seeking to decentre the state from this analysis, I demonstrate how such examples enliven the fast and slow violence of child abuse and neglect, and the role of non-state actors when it comes to the recalibration of collective memory.