Cross-Cultural Collaboration and Conflict Narrative: A Study of Urban Immigrant Memory Based on Participatory Art

Abstract

This article aims to explore how participatory art, as a unique medium and method, intervenes in the process of memory production and narrative reconstruction of urban migrants. In the globalized urban landscape, immigrants are not only physical space movers but also carriers and reshapers of cultural memories. However, their memories and narratives are often marginalized, simplified or obscured in the mainstream urban discourse, leading to the predicament of cultural identity and potential cross-cultural conflicts. This study holds that traditional interviews or observational research are difficult to fully stimulate the subjective expression of immigrant groups. Participatory art, through its inherent collaborative, procedural and physical nature, can create a temporary and equal "heterotopia" space, transforming immigrants from passive "research subjects" to active "co-creators". This article, through in-depth analysis of several typical cases of participatory art projects, explains how the artistic creation process prompts non-verbal and emotional dialogues between individual immigrants and urban residents, communities, and even the urban space itself. In this process, an individual's fragmented memories are embodied and materialized, and then converge into a collective, visible and tangible "memory text". The research focuses on analyzing the "conflict narratives" that are bound to occur in this collaboration - including intergenerational differences, the collision of urban and rural concepts, and the friction of cultural habits, etc. - and argues that these conflicts are not negative obstacles but key opportunities to build a more inclusive and tense "shared memory". Ultimately, this paper proposes that memory research based on participatory art is not only a rescue record of immigration history, but also a kind of urban cultural practice pointing to the future. Through creative collaboration, it transforms implicit memories into explicit public narratives, providing an emotional foundation and imaginative path for building a truly "symbiotic city".