THE PROJECT
A living map of Fort-de-France's collective memory
Mémoires Nomades is a heritage project led by the « Comité Devoir de Mémoire » together with SERMAC, the Cultural Action Department of the City of Fort-de-France. Its mission: to identify, map and tell the story of memorial sites across the city, places that carry a collective history, often invisible in the dominant narrative.
At launch, the journey features a first emblematic memorial site: Place du 22 Mai in the Trénelle district, a symbol of the abolition of slavery in Martinique, where the work of Khokho RENÉ-CORAIL stands. Mémoires Nomades is designed to grow: each new memorial site will enrich a living map of Fort-de-France's memory.
The map pin artwork is inspired by “Vies-âges MARCARAÎMON”, a work by Christophe MERT.
Why now?
Because passing on this memory is an educational and political urgency, and because digital media can reach what a stone monument cannot reach alone: the diaspora, young people, international visitors and researchers. Across Fort-de-France, dozens of places carry their history in silence, it's time to give them a voice.
A memory that fades with its witnesses
Without contemporary support, video, audio, mobile journeys, stories passed down orally risk being lost. Mémoires Nomades captures these testimonies, makes them accessible at any time, from anywhere, and passes them on to the generations who never met the actors of the 20th-century memorial struggles.
Digital media to open up, share, reach further
The website is multilingual from launch, French, Creole, English, Spanish, to anchor Creole as a language of memory and open the project to Caribbean, French, English- and Spanish-speaking audiences. Whether they are residents of Fort-de-France, fellow Martinican islanders, cruise ship passengers, members of the diaspora or schoolchildren, every visitor finds a structured digital gateway to this heritage.
A civilization that proves incapable of solving the problems it creates is a decadent civilization.
