Counter-Monuments

In the recent decades, monumentality has been significantly reconsidered with its symbolic materiality and agency in public spaces. Counter-, non-, and anti-monumental practices have emerged on the scene of contemporary art as a new, critical mode of commemorative and social ritual. While addressing the well-known query on whether monumentality can still be considered a valid tool able to synthesize and keep the collective memory, the current paper investigates the remembrance practices by TIST collective (Italy). In the last two years TIST implemented a series of artistic actions in the urban space designed to address the emergence and endurance of a commemorative community and the possibility of remembrance as a public ritual.

The pivotal role of the Bulgarian Communist Party in the anti-fascist resistance movement and of the Soviet Union in liberating Bulgaria from fascism were the two central pillars of the narrative of the history and memory of Second World War in communist Bulgaria. The end of communism marked the beginning of a new reading of the past and an increased public interest in topics and personalities, whose historical evaluation had been caught in the grip of the established ideological canon for decades. The reassessment of Bulgarian national history also referred to the period of the Second World War. The new historical narrative necessitated also re-evaluation of the memory of the period and its visual representation. In the new political environment after 1989, when Bulgarian society was desperately seeking to break away from its recent past, the presence in public space of the ideologically grounded monuments built during the previous regime became problematic, because they represented the most visible part of the communist legacy. The question of the fate of World War II-era monuments in Bulgaria is part of the larger issue of the fate of the communist legacy, which is relevant to the whole of Eastern Europe. The aim of this article is to present in a synthesized form the changes that took place in the memory of World War II and its visual representation in post-communist Bulgaria with a major focus on the fate of the monuments devoted to the war that were built during the socialist period.

This article situates its attention on the November 2020 protests in Peru, with particular emphasis on the events in Lima, following the controversial appointment of congressman Manuel Merino as interim president. Merino’s ascension to power was widely perceived as a parliamentary coup and triggered widespread civil unrest, which was marked by brutal crackdowns by state security forces, highlighting deep tensions between the government and the people.
In this context, I will shed light on the tensions that emerged from the spontaneous actions of civilians as they sought to make their concerns visible, transforming public space into a contested arena for dissent
and resistance. By occupying and reshaping these public spaces, protesters not only expressed their discontent but also redefined the symbolic meaning of these spaces amidst the political turmoil.
Specifically, this article explores the role of El Puño Vigilante (The Vigilant Fist), an ephemeral monument constructed by a group of artists during the protests with active contributions from the public.
The monument represented a symbol of collective resistance and a shared sense of purpose during the civil unrest. As a temporary structure, El Puño Vigilante offered a counter-narrative to the dominant state- sponsored narratives represented by more permanent monuments, which often serve to reinforce an artificial collective memory designed to sustain official notions of national identity.
Despite its brief existence, El Puño Vigilante became a focal point for the protest movement and embodied the voice of dissent. Its eventual destruction by far-right sympathizers highlights the ongoing struggle over public space and memory, as well as the clash between competing historical narratives and visions of national identity.
This analysis operates within the broader context of public spaces, especially in moments of political crisis, as mediums for generating collective memory through innovative social practices. Drawing on the
case of El Puño Vigilante, I will demonstrate how ephemeral monuments reflect grassroots resistance to state-imposed historical narratives. Through this lens, I will explore how contested spaces became platforms for resistance in the 2020 protests in Lima and discuss the critical role that temporary acts of collective memory played in shaping these social uprisings.

Besides commemorating an important event or person, memorials have powerful communicative capacities. The difference between graffiti and memorials is obvious: graffiti is known for being provocative and not durable – it is ephemeral and emerges from the street, while monuments are erected “permanently”, often by a political power. From the perspective of protecting historical and artistic monuments, colourful graffiti may significantly damage them. Nevertheless, graffiti is a tool of protest, free expression and communication. Since 1968 citizens have often vividly expressed their feelings through demonstrations and street interventions in the form of graffiti and painting monuments, especially those associated with the Soviet Union. The aim of this paper is to analyse the function of the Soviet war memorials in the territory of the former Czechoslovakia in terms of their roles as communicators, reflected in the form of graffiti during both domestic and international crises and conflicts in the past half century.

This article discusses the practices and conceptualizations of the Clepsydra @ 37.94578, 23.61960 public mnemonic performance/ in-situ light installation (Lipasmata Drapetsonas, Piraeus, Greece, October 2020). Referring to twenty-one selected cases of lethal political violence in Greece during the years of 1978-2020, Clepsydra @ 37.94578, 23.61960 endeavours to map a traumatic route in time and unveil the political phantasma as a performative geographical inscription questioning traditional forms of mnemonic representation in the urban environment. It corresponds to Mark Fischer’s and Wendy Brown’s analysis of the complicated synergy of capitalist realism and neoconservatism in controlling collective memory and public space and dismantling democracy. It incorporates the idea of the ghost as a nomadic (im)materiality that unsettles the linearity of space and time working both as a political mediator and a holder of historical memory but also framing conditions for alternative futures. It seeks to create an archaeology of the political phantasma calling for political awareness against the current rise of neo-fascist movements in Western capitalist societies, and the moving forward by acknowledging and fulfilling the responsibility towards the dead.

The problem of the formation and development of privileges in politics in Bulgaria is not significantly different from what is happening with their evolution in Europe and worldwide. In this case, the only more substantive difference is that the privileges of power in Bulgaria began „anew“ for the simple reason that the country was liberated from Ottoman tyranny, after which the third Bulgarian state was established. That is to say, the emergence and consolidation of privileges took place immediately after the Liberation, as they found a place as an opportunity for institutionalization and regulation already in the texts of the Tarnovo Constitution (1879). Since then, the privileges of power have become an inevitable companion of political elites, who, depending on the nature of society (authoritarian, totalitarian, democratic), constantly consume one or other state benefits and advantages, legitimised in various normative documents. In this sense, and on the basis of historical development, we can conditionally divide the application of power privileges in Bulgaria into three main stages: the first – from the Liberation (1878) to 1946, or the so-called „capitalist stage“ of the primary and earliest development of this phenomenon (privileges); the second stage includes the „socialist“ nomenklatura privileges (1947 – 1989), which developed enormously in absolutely all spheres of society; and the third is the democratic, or modern, stage of the application of privilege (from 1990 to the present), during which all the benefits of power for the country’s new democratic elites (along the lines of Western democratic models) unfolded with full „legitimate force“.
Through the prism of this tentative periodization, saturated with many significant accents and peculiarities in the construction of the Bulgarian state, the new institutions and political parties, we will also examine the filigree „weaving“ into the pores of statehood of many of the emerging privileges of the elite (in each stage separately), in order to highlight more clearly their significance in Bulgarian politics.

Ks. T a d e u s z K o ł o s o w s k i SDB TADEUSZ KOŁOSOWSKI Commentarius in Mathaei Evangelium3 lektura Pisma świętego łączy się ściśle ze wspólnotą wiary, jaką stanowi Kościół. Taką myśl ujawnia Hilary choćby w przypadku egzegezy następujących słów ewangelicznych: "Owego dnia Jezus wyszedł z domu i usiadł nad jeziorem. Wnet zebrały się koło Niego tłumy tak wielkie, że wszedł do łodzi i usiadł, a cały lud stał na brzegu. I mówił im wiele w przypowieściach tymi słowami [...]" (Mt 13, 1-3). Biskup Poitiers daje odnośnie do tych słów następującą interpretację: "To, że siedział w łodzi4, a rzesze stały na brzegu, wyjaśnia treść omawianych wydarzeń. Zamierzał bowiem przemawiać w przypowieściach i sposobem przepowiadania wskazuje, że ci, którzy pozostają poza Kościołem, nic nie będą mogli zrozumieć z Jego boskiego nauczania. Łódź bowiem jest typem Kościoła, w którym znaj duje się i jest głoszone słowo życia. Ci natomiast, którzy są na zewnątrz, niby na brzegu piaszczystym, nieurodzajnym i bezużytecznym, nie mogą zrozumieć słowa"5. W myśl alegorycznej symboliki, wedle której łódź wyobraża Kościół, Hilary wydobywa z owego ewangelicznego tekstu sens mówiący o tym, że Słowo Boga przepowiada się w Kościele i tylko tam może być ono właściwie zrozumiane. Inny wybitny starochrześcijański badacz Pisma świętego, Hieronim ze Strydonu, wy jaśnia, że tylko człowiek duchowy może odkryć Chrystusa w księgach Bożych6. Każdy wykład Biblii jako Słowa Bożego jest więc ściśle związany z przestrze nią ducha, to znaczy jest możliwy w Kościele. Z tej więzi Pisma świętego z Ko ściołem wynika, że można je tylko zrozumieć we wspólnocie wierzących, który mi kieruje Duch Święty. Święty Grzegorz Wielki stwierdza wprost: "Słów Boga 3 Commentarius in Mathaei Evangelium jest jednym z trzech, obok Tractatus super Psalmos i Tractatus mysteriorum, dzieł egzegetycznych świętego Hilarego z Poitiers. Komentarz jest pier wszym owocem działalności pisarskiej Hilarego, a także pierwszym komentarzem łacińskim do Ewangelii wg świętego Mateusza, jaki zachował się do naszych czasów. Komentarz ten napisał Hilary w pierwszych latach swojego episkopatu, najprawdopodobniej w latach 3 5 3-356. Nie zachował się on w całości. Zaginął wstęp, zdania interpretujące ostatnie wiersze Ewangelii, być może zakończnie. Komentarz Hilarego przedstawia się jako lektura ciągła tekstu pierwszej Ewangelii. Biskup Poitiers wyjaśnia w nim wersety i rozdziały w takim porządku, w jakim zapisano je w Ewangelii. Komentarz ten posiada wyraźnie duszpasterskie tendencje; por.

Rebecka Katz Thor’s “Concepts of Monumental Time” discusses the way in which monuments have changed in meaning and impact over the last few decades. Ever since James E. Young coined the term “counter-monument”, the ways in which appearance and memory are joined have been conceptualized in new ways. Not only does a counter-monument make memory work possible: it may also defy ideologies such as fascism through its very existence. Today, monuments have been seen to develop into “post-monuments”, defined in Katz Thor´s article as monuments that are directed towards neither nation building nor defiance, but rather a structural wrongdoing in the past that society has not come to terms with.

Saint Paul’s Cathedral is a contradiction. Beautiful and majestic, it combines an almost Catholic shape with a Protestant soul. It is one of the most powerful symbols of England, and a reason for pride for any Londoner. This paper wants to explore the architectural variations of Saint Paul’s, especially before and after the Great Fire in 1666, to unveil the peculiar relationship between the cathedral and the people of London. Although St Paul’s has been a constant for the Londoners, its role in their lives has not always been the same. The progressive change in people’s attitude towards the cathedral went at the same pace as the alteration of the architecture of the building, which mirrored the social, political, and religious changes of the country. From being a central point of commerce and medieval social life during its Norman period and its Gothic style, the cathedral evolved into the highest symbol of religion and power and reached its peak with the design provided by Wren. Lo...

Kunst-aktivistische Strategien haben sich zu einem festen Teil erinnerungskulturellen Gedenkens entwickelt. Unter dem Rekurs auf einen westlich-modernen Kunstbegriff versuchen konservative bis rechtsextreme Positionen immer häufiger, Denkmäler vor der Weggestaltung zu bewahren. Der Beitrag fragt nach den Möglichkeiten antifaschistischer Interventionen in Denkmaldiskurse: Wie können sie einer »Rechtsverschiebung der Idee autonomer Kunst« (Wolfgang Ullrich) entgegentreten und für intersektionale Formen der Erinnerungskultur kämpfen, ohne eine Errungenschaft moderner Kunst zu negieren, mit der Betrachter*innen verunsichert und Erkenntnisprozesse in Gang gesetzt werden? Die Autorin skizziert das Konzept des Gegen-Denkmals nach James E. Young und das des Para-Monuments nach Nora Sternfeld. Beide entwerfen Theorien für eine Gestaltungspraxis, die eine stetige Reflexion postnazistischer und postkolonialer Gesellschaften vorantreiben soll. Zugleich knüpfen sie an das Konzept von Denkmälern als dauerhaftem Erinnerungsort an. Interventionistische Formen eines geschichtspolitischen gestalterischen Gedenkens versprechen, autoritäre Endgültigkeitsgesten zu unterlaufen. Die Autorin analysiert zwei Interventionen, die überholte Denkmalbilder aufbrechen und bestehende gesellschaftliche Strukturen zur Disposition stellen. Sie machen auf bestehende Herrschaftsformen sowie geschichtspolitische Normen aufmerksam und erlauben alternative erinnerungskulturelle Strategien – ohne gesellschaftliche Reflexion in neuen Denkmälern festzuschreiben.

; www.uha.hr Zaprimljene tekstove i slikovne materijale ne vraćamo. Pretplata: godišnja pretplata (šest brojeva, poštarina uključena) za članove društava arhitekata iznosi 150,00 a za sve ostale fizičke i pravne osobe 200,00 kn. godišnja pretplata za studente iznosi100,00 kn. plaćanje poštanskom uputnicom na žiroračun uha 2360000-1101550751 s naznakom "za covjek i prostor". Za reprodukciju fotografija i ilustracija nakladnik i uredništvo nastojali su pribaviti odgovarajuće podatke o autorima. budući da za neke fotografije i ilustracije nije bilo pisanih tragova, nakladnik moli sve autore koji ovdje nisu spomenuti da pošalju svoje podatke. ako smo nekoga izostavili, to ćemo ispraviti u sljedećim brojevima. Zahvaljujemo ministarstvu kulture rh, uredu za kulturu grada Zagreba u realizaciji časopisa. tisak ČIp-a potpomogao je Zvonko maković.

A decade after 1989, Poland began experiencing a "memory boom." This explosion in cultural productions dealing with the past inspired scholarly research on collective memory in fields as diverse as Anthropology, Archeology, Art History, Communications, Cultural Studies, History, Film, Languages and Linguistics, Literature, Journalism, Media Studies, Museum Studies, Political Science, Psychology, and Sociology. While this intellectual surge drew inspiration from classical works produced earlier in Western Europe and the United States, it also produced a plethora of new concepts, theories, and perspectives rooted in the Central European experience and drew on classical Polish authors. This incredibly rich field of inquiry presents an intellectual labyrinth that can be difficult to navigate. Novices may have trouble finding their bearings, while seasoned scholars may talk past each other, each using terms native to their disciplines for lack of a common language.

Police corruption is a major problem almost everywhere, but it is a poorly understood phenomenon. Leslie Holmes' book addresses the need for a more scientific understanding, utilising an innovative in-depth comparative method. Most importantly, he identifies clear and practical measures to optimise integrity and improve public trust in police.

Quel est le point commun entre les autodafés, les attentats terroristes et les frontières de guerre ? En terme d’architecture, on peut citer les contre-monuments. Cette pratique apparaît en Allemagne dans les années 1980 suite à la Seconde Guerre mondiale, une réponse au vide laissé par la guerre. C’est à cette période que ce courant émerge pour proposer des alternatives au monument traditionnel. La mutilation est l’acte intentionnel de faire subir une transformation physique au monument et cette pratique est courante depuis l’Egypte antique, mais ce n’est qu’à la fin du XXème siècle que la contre-monumentalité est requise pour répondre aux mutilations de guerre, et à l’absence présente.

La mutilation du monument en est-elle l’élément déclencheur ? Si oui, en est-ce l’unique moteur ? La contre-monumentalité, les monuments négatifs, les contre-monuments et les anti-monuments seraient les faces d’une même pièce ? Cependant, il s’avère qu’une distinction est à faire. Les événements cités en introduction sont le point de départ de cette recherche, il se trouve que chacun d’entre eux a donné naissance à des projets distincts, que nous analyserons deux à deux en parallèle de l’événement en question.

En chaque monument sommeille donc un contre-monument ? Alors dans ce cas comment le révéler ? Pour répondre à cette question, un projet de recherche est réalisé pour l’occasion afin d’observer si le moteur du contre-monument est toujours le fruit d’une mutilation. L’élément déclencheur est ici aussi une thématique liée à la guerre, celle des flux migratoires qui en découlent. Pour cela, on s’appuiera sur le monument commémoratif d’un des Pères de l’Europe, Robert Schuman, pour proposer son contre-monument.

The paper presents research on the correspondence of the theoretical definition and the practical understanding and application by Bulgarian candidates for political posts in the elections hold in 2014 – 2019 of the concept "positive election campaign". The questions are: does the meaning that the candidates attach to the term "positive campaign" correspond to its scientifically determined theoretical definition and how do the concept and its application correlate? The hypothesis states that (1) the phrase "positive campaign" is a key statement in the rhetoric of candidates; (2) the more conquered a country turns out to be, the more often the candidates for power build their pre-election political statements on the concept; (3) most often the election candidates mean a campaign with no compromising materials or hate speech, held in a spirit of good tone and ethics, promising more effective governance and a better future when they use the concept "p...

Plovdiv’s Bratska Mogila is a remarkable work of monumental sculpture from the
post-Stalinist period in Bulgaria. A symbiotic ensemble of architecture, sculpture,
monu mental art, and urban planning, the monument was built in 1974 as a temple to
harbor the remains and the memory of young anti-fascist partisans who died in the region of Plovdiv between World War I and World War II. Inside, a sequence of nineteen
monumental sculptural compositions narrates the revolutionary history of the Bulgarian
people as constructed from the perspective of the 1960s and 1970s: a nationalist
history rewritten through the socialist present, it also imagined and forged connections
with global struggles against colonialism and racism. The monument has thus arrested
the conflicting political logics of the post-Stalinist era and its worldly entanglements in
all their monumentality and tension. This paper offers a historical reconstruction and a
close reading of the monument, exploring post-Stalinist visions of socialism, nationhood,
and the global imaginaries of the era in their tensions and contradictions.

A new cult of monuments, devised a quarter a century ago, was redirected to complex, formerly celebrated and suddenly disputed or rejected inheritance. Its complexity lays in its formal and functional variety, its integration in the spaces of everyday life and in its inscribed, repressed or re-recognized values and meanings. The concept of heritage refers here to physically and publicly visible, often omnipresent – therefore irritant, carelessly tolerated, or adopted – architecture, urban planning and sculptural monuments, whose initial task was to convey socially relevant messages or to help fulfill utopian and normalizing programs in traumatized and radically reformed societies of the divided Europe.
Few years before the collapse of the Soviet Block, Norbert Huse initiated the discussion on uncomfortable architectural monuments, developing Willibald Sauerländer’s research on extension of the concept of monuments. It seems natural that these discursive anticipations emerged in West Germany, not only because of the decades-long confronting the collective guilt exemplified by ubiquitous, warning ruins and alienating modernist forms, but also due to conservation tradition that since 1900 insisted on the values of the aged, wounded and derelict monumental forms. Huse’s discussion was soon accompanied by another “western” initiative, the establishment of DOCOMOMO, which tended to transform aesthetically recognized architectural forms of Modernism (not rarely used as provisory tools of social reform) into heritage worthy of permanent care.
It seems safe to say that this generally wasn’t the case in most of the emancipated nations of the post-communist Europe, where the obsolete ideological substrate endangered the matter and form of monument in the eyes and hands of the democratizing and renascent national communities. It is still hard to provide a comprehensive (and comparative) international diagnosis on the magnitude of these transformations – ranging from careless adaptation, indolence, vandalism and dereliction to removal and destruction – happening in this part of Europe in the aftermath of 1989. As time passes, it seems natural not only to document, comparatively research and publicly present the consequences of this increasingly distant yet still resounding inclinatio Imperii, but to create a synchronic, post-traumatic, critical and edifying diagnosis that could help define our sense of contemporaneity, collective memory and social responsibility. It should cover diverse social responses to central political change, but it should also strive to apply long acquired instruments of the conservation movement to this complex artistic, architectural or just prosaic inheritance, that is increasingly considered a valuable heritage.
The inherent aim of the analysis of the phenomena prevailing after the fall of the Berlin Wall would be to unite the professional initiatives in wider post-communist European perspective. This presentation therefore tends to study the origins of the aforementioned cult, its development, accomplishments, limitations and problems that transcend the boundaries of the conservation profession. Due to the fact that transformation of public spaces in post-communist Europe gained immense social and political importance, equally by applying the principles of subtraction and addition, interdisciplinary comparative analysis of these processes should become questions of professional ethos and social responsibility.

This paper discusses the dialectics of urban place and its public image, approached via an examination of the public process of proposing, debating, and selecting new monuments for the city of Gothenburg, Sweden. The analysis shows that while the proposed monument to the local foodstuff halv special (a type of hot dog) is generally received in a positive way, the proposal of a monument to falafel is met with criticism. The results suggest that the two artworks represent different classed, gendered, and racialized imaginations of the city and its residents: while the hotdog reproduces a long-standing and dominant Social Democrat understanding of Gothenburg as the home of the white male worker, the falafel suggests an updated and more inclusive idea of the city as multilingual and multicultural.

This article examines the use of the memorialization of Reagan in transatlantic relations -specifically in the commemorations of the Ronald Reagan Centennial Year in 2011 in Central and Eastern Europe. Extrapolating from the case of Hungary, the article argues that because of the contemporary political status of its drivers and its oblique message, the Reagan Centennial's campaign in Central Europe can be called "shadow" memorial diplomacy, which in 2011 used the former president's memory to articulate and strengthen a model of U.S. leadership and foreign policy parallel to and ready to replace those of the then Obama administration. This study can serve as an international extension of previous scholarship on the politics of the memory of Ronald Reagan within the United States, as well as a case study of the use of memory in international relations.

Attraverso un’analisi interdisciplinare, il testo affronta il caso studio Prototypes, consistente nella proposta dell’artista C. Büchel di considerare i prototipi di muro di confine tra USA e Messico dei monumenti nazionali. Tramite gli strumenti teorici garantiti dai border studies, dalla filosofia analitica e dalla storia dell’arte contemporanea, lo studio avanza un’interpretazione dell’oggetto d’analisi in termini di difficult heritage (MacDonald 2008) contemporaneo e apporta alcune inedite e significative note a margine, riportando l’attenzione sui diversi livelli di lettura della vicenda.

Over the course of the last four decades there has been a growing interest in the development and impact of counter memorials and counter monuments. While counter memorial and monument practices have been explored in Europe and the United States, relatively little research has been conducted in the Australian context. This systematic literature review examines the current state of scholarship by exploring what form counter monuments and memorials have taken and what events they have focussed on. A total of 134 studies met the selection criteria and were included in the final review. The major factors identified that have impacted on the development of the counter memorial and monument genre in Australia are international and domestic influences, historical, political and social-cultural events in Australia, the socio-political agenda of various individuals or organisations, and the aesthetics of the counter memorials and monuments themselves. The review found that Australia has a diverse and active counter memorial and monument genre, with commemorative practices honouring Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples, women, victims of human made and natural disasters, the experiences of asylum seekers, and the histories and experiences of the lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender and queer communities.

In March 2021, Genevieve Grieves and Amy Spiers co-convened the online symposium "Counter-monuments: Indigenous settler relations in Australian contemporary art and memorial practices" with hosting partner Australian Centre for Contemporary Art. The symposium offered reflections on the broader public’s understanding of Australian colonial history, its violence and legacies, can be challenged and transformed through creative memorialisation and critical, counter- monument artistic practice. It featured contributions by Paola Balla, Lilly Brown, Fiona Foley, Kate Golding, Julie Gough, Dianne Jones, Djon Mundine, Odette Kelada, Clare Land, Carol Que, Joel Sherwood Spring, and the Unbound Collective. Part of an ongoing project, the symposium will inform an anthology of essays to be published by Springer in 2022. In the following conversation, Grieves and Spiers consider key works and ideas raised during the symposium, as well as debates stimulated by counter-monument art practices, and how they become critical scenes to appraise past and present relations between First Peoples and settlers in Australia.

The idea of this paper is to examine the process of party identity construction in post-socialist Sofia through urban political graffiti. During the socialist period the political parties in post-socialist countries have experienced identity deficiency. Hence their fifteen-year efforts to rebuild, On the walls of the National Library, Sofia

To hear an echo is to witness a past event; it is a past event in the here and now. The phenomenon of the echo is not an event cut off from its conception, that first outburst of noise or speech. But rather it is that birthing event, delayed and distorted but nonetheless that past moment in this present; the echo is its own past made present. The echo is presented - made present - as an ephemeral event, departed yet connected from its own materialisation in the past; a distinct spatio-temporal activity and phenomenon where the past is dematerialised to erupt upon the present. The echo appears to deliver a unique paradigm for memorialisation and remembrance, the opportunity to access and (de)materialise a past event within a concrete present. But the echo performs a distinct spatio-temporal praxis is in antithesis to traditional monumentalism. The performance is not a practice of material making but immaterial un-making; a practice of absence and ephemerality. An art practice of echo...

The Majimaji was a war of resistance against German colonial rule in Tanzania which occurred between 1905 and 1907. The war is largely known from historical sources which include the German observers of the war, African historians and Africanist historians. Very few archaeological researches inform the Majimaji war. Although the materiality of the war exists, the landscape and memories of the war create a potential database for archaeologists. This paper theorizes the Majimaji war from landscape, memory and agency perspectives. In a broad sense, the paper delineates concepts that define conflicts and the landscape of conflict; agency as a broad theoretical framework on which the paper is grounded; and the processes of memory, memorialization and the creation of the war memorials.

This is an article on Yael Bartana's monument to Child Emigration from Frankfurt am Main during the Nazi era (inauguration fall 2021). I discuss her unique approach, which neither uses minimalist abstraction nor figurative representation and contextualize it in the history of Holocaust commemoration.
The catalogue was published on the occasion of the exhibition held at the German National Library. It is bilingual - please go to page 179 for the English version of the text.

This paper deals with the Hungarian Holocaust Memorial Year 2014 and the ongoing debate about how to assess Hungary’s involvement in the Holocaust. By introducing the Holocaust Memorial Year 2014, erecting the Monument on the German Occupation and initiating a Memorial to Child Victims of the Holocaust (the House of Fates), the Hungarian government tried to establish a common narrative about the Holocaust in Hungary. For various reasons, however, this attempt failed. Instead, it turned out that the anniversary year 2014 fostered the emergence of diverse new cultures of commemoration at different levels of society. This study discusses the reasons for these developments and provides an overview of the (public) events surrounding commemorations in the Holocaust Memorial Year, thus exploring Hungary’s process of coming to terms with its past. The events in 2014 were accompanied by disputes at multiple levels that were held in the public domain and involved all types of traditional and ...

This paper deals with the Hungarian Holocaust Memorial Year 2014 and the ongoing debate about how to assess Hungary's involvement in the Holocaust. By introducing the Holocaust Memorial Year 2014, erecting the Monument on the German Occupation and initiating a Memorial to Child Victims of the Holocaust (the House of Fates), the Hungarian government tried to establish a common narrative about the Holocaust in Hungary. For various reasons, however, this attempt failed. Instead, it turned out that the anniversary year 2014 fostered the emergence of diverse new cultures of commemoration at different levels of society. This study discusses the reasons for these developments and provides an overview of the (public) events surrounding commemorations in the Holocaust Memorial Year, thus exploring Hungary's process of coming to terms with its past. The events in 2014 were accompanied by disputes at multiple levels that were held in the public domain and involved all types of traditio...

The objective of the article is to map the institutional and practical issues of the illicit trade of cultural heritage in Bulgaria. Due to the lack of sufficient prior academic research in that field, multidisciplinary approach, including media analysis is adopted and applied. Thus, limited and rather initial conclusions could be drawn and presented, namely that there are various institutional loopholes allowing the spread of such practices and that the illicit trade of heritage in Bulgaria is growing and being widely internationalized. The results call for further academic research.

“A escritura da memória: mostrar palavras e narrar imagens”, in: Remate de Males, Revista do Departamento de Teoria Literária do IEL, UNICAMP, 26.1, janeiro-junho/2006, pp. 31-45. (Dossiê “Literatura como uma arte da memória”)

Na era da computação e da implantação do ciberespaço vivemos diariamente — nas situ- ações mais banais — as conseqüências das inovações tecnológicas. Essas conseqüências são, na verdade, devastadoras se pensarmos na imagem do homem herdada da tradicional antropologia filosófica. Nosso corpo — submetido aos ditames dessa tecnologia — tam- bém é marcado por essas alterações e, com ele, a nossa visão do ser humano. Além de ficarmos usualmente horas a fio sentados diante da tela lisa e fria do monitor, penetramos através dessa “janela” em um mundo de informações de uma amplitude nunca sonhada pelo mais delirante enciclopedista. E mais: como evitar uma total reformulação na nossa concepção de homem se agora podemos finalmente construir o nosso Golem, os nossos Frankensteins ou os nossos robôs com inteligência artificial? Como traçar o limite entre o “natural” e o “artificial”? Se a nossa “humanidade” se torna mais frágil na medida em que é submetida a cada dia a um processo de redesenhamento das suas fronteiras (e da sua “essência”) não é de se estranhar que uma de nossas principais características, a de ser um “homo memor”, ou seja, um “ser com memória”, também seja repensada no contexto da era do ciberarquivo potencialmente infinito.

The implementation of the new ideological and artistic concept of the Museum and Memorial in Sobibór on the site of the former Nazi German death camp selected in the 2013 competition is discussed. The winning design is analysed; apart from the arranging of the area of the former camp, it also envisaged raising of a museum, the latter stage already completed with the building opened to the public in 2020. The concept of 'space of engagement' is proposed by the Author as best characterising a memorial site created on the premises of the former Nazi concentration camps and death camps for the people of Jewish descent. As a departure point, earlier examples of commemorating similar sites are recalled, beginning with the early monuments from the 1940s, through the 1957 competition for the International Monument to the Victims of the Auschwitz-Birkenau Camp, the latter of major impact on the process of the redefinition of monuments. The then awarded design of the The Road Monument by Oskar Hansen and his team, however unimplemented owing to the protest of former Auschwitz prisoners, became from that time onwards a benchmark for subsequent
concepts. Also the mentioned memorial design on the area of the former Belzec extermination camp from 2004 is related to James E. Young’s concept of a counter-monument.
The main subject of the paper’s analysis is, however, the reflection on means thanks to which the currently mounted Museum and Memorial in Sobibór, including the permanent display at the newly-raised Museum, become 'space of engagement' for contemporary public on different perception levels of their multi-sensual activity essential in the process of remembrance.

The argument of this article is that the post-communist transition in Bulgaria is in fact an institutionalization of the practices of disorder. As a result, there develops a distinct differentiation between the political elite and its electorate. The divergence is one of values. The bottom line is the different normative base for evaluating the processes enfolding in Bulgaria: (a) the EU and NATO accession-priorities and macroeconomic stability for the elites; and (b) the rising insecurity and decline in economic wellbeing for the majority of citizens. This article makes the point that the situation is further compounded by the current government's (i) public attitude of disregarding the laws of the state, "because they are bound to change" and (ii) its abstract reference to the notion of "professionalism" when explaining its decision-making, thus, hinting at a belief of its own infallibility. As a result, more often than not, the current political class is ruling by enforcement of its policies, rather than consent. Said otherwise, the Euro-Atlantic values of accession are brought into question because Bulgarians perceive them not as their own, but as represented and upheld by corrupt politicians. * The author wishes to thank SEEP's anonymous reviewers, as well as Dimitar Bechev, Joseph Benatov, Viktor Bojkov, Tomislav Donchev, Ivailo Nikolov, Magdalena Zolkos, and especially Slavka and Raicho Kavalski for their insightful comments on earlier drafts, perceptive suggestions, dedicated support and encouragement. Anything that is of value in this article is thanks to these individuals; however, all its weaknesses are entirely my responsibility.

The following paper analyses the faith of the Soviet Army memorials in Central and Eastern Europe, as they represent one of the most controversial communist patrimonies. The erection of the Soviet Army Memorials across CEE was supposed to be a commemoration of a loss, grief or victory, while the USSR was also establishing its cultural and political dominance in the post-WWII period. Consequently, the locals also see them as a symbol of a foreign army who acted as an invader and brought a dictatorial regime.

As CEE states passed through different de-communization processes acts of abandonment, relocation, vandalism, and even demolishment have haunted the memorials. However, as a typical example of socialist realism, the memorials also have a powerful historical, artistic and socio-political significance. The paper firstly explores the context of the monument-building process based on historical research on the nucleus of the Soviet Cultural ideology, its universalism, and manifestation through architecture and art, while also analysing case studies about the current state of such memorials in different CEE states.

The final part of the paper illustrates a pilot project aiming to enhance the local and transnational appreciation of the memorials. Taking advantage of the surge in demand for dark heritage tourism, a cultural route and a place-making approach, applicable on the monument sites and through a digital platform, is proposed. The aim is to encourage the revitalization of this heritage and using it as a catalyst for inclusive societies, which are in terms with their past.

The fall of the Berlin Wall not only anticipated the demise of Communism as a political symbol in the former Eastern Bloc and beyond, but it also meant for millions of citizens the loss of the reference points around which their identity and everyday life had been organised since the end of the Second World War.

The book crystallizes the moment of passage from the artistic practice of exchange with the territory, ephemeral and temporary, to a formal and permanent definition of the project: collecting points of view, images and texts on the research carried out generates a precious testimony of an ambitious work such as the Monumento Diffuso in Milan.
Edited by Postmediabooks

postmedia books 2019
82 pp. 62 ill. a colori
formato 140x220mm
isbn 9788874902347

In January 2017, settler Australian artist, Amy Spiers, launched a creative campaign to contest habitual associations at the site of Hanging Rock in Central Victoria with a white vanishing myth. Entitled #MirandaMustGo, the campaign’s objective was to provoke thought and unease about why the missing white schoolgirls of Joan Lindsay’s fictional novel, Picnic at Hanging Rock, prompted more attention and feeling in the general public than the actual losses of lives, land and culture experienced by Indigenous people in the region as a consequence of rapid and violent colonial occupation. The campaign incited significant media attention, substantial public debate and some reconsideration of the stories told at Hanging Rock. In this article, Spiers will describe how she conceptualized the artwork/campaign as a propositional counter-memorial action that attempted to conceive ways in which non-Indigenous Australians can acknowledge, and take responsibility for, the denial of colonization’s impact on Indigenous people. She will do so by discussing the critical methodology that underpinned this socially engaged artwork and continue by analysing the public reception and dissensus the campaign provoked. She will conclude in presenting some thoughts about what #MirandaMustGo produced: a rupture of the public secret of Australia’s violent colonial past, a marked shift to the discourse concerning Hanging Rock and an ongoing, unresolved agitation stimulated by Picnic at Hanging Rock’s persistent reproducibility.

This research into former Yugoslavia’s spomenik (monuments) explores the critical relationship between a series of material memorials, their mediatized representations, and their most recent appropriation in order to underscore the transformative nature of historic signification as both a built and symbolic continuum. Erected over the span of twenty years before Josip Tito’s death and just prior to Yugoslavia’s disintegration, the spomenik currently epitomize a gradient of decay, some fixed while others are in rapid flux at a critical point for conservation efforts. In each instance, however, their contemporary condition in stark juxtaposition to an original intended meaning points to the persistent power and allegorical potential of counter-monumentality. Tracing the modes in which these contradictory and semantically charged sites operate in response to or in spite of contemporary preservation efforts, allows for reflection upon both authoritative and informal cooption of singular cultural connotation and speculation about the power of memorial elasticity.