The Architecture of Memory by mereidasf

A Visual Essay by Mereida Fajardo

All drawings © Mereida Fajardo 2021

Editorial Statement...................................................................................................................5 1. The Structures of Memory - Jewish Museum Berlin ......................................................6 2. The Memorial in Motion - National Memorial for Peace and Justice.........................14 3. The Museum as Memorial - Apartheid Museum...........................................................22 4. The Memorial in the City - Memorial to the Abolition of Slavery...............................28 5. The Modernist Memorial - ‘Spomeniks’..........................................................................34 6. The Anti-Memorial............................................................................................................42 Bibliography............................................................................................................................48

“How does a state incorporate its crimes against others into its national memorial landscape? How does a state recite, much less commemorate, the litany of misdeeds, making it part of its reason for being? Where is the tradition for a memorial mea culpa, when combined remembrance and self-indictment seem so hopelessly at odds?”

- James E. Young, The Texture of Memory (1992)

The memorial, as intersection of public art and political memory, has undergone a curious transformation in the last half-century. The cataclysmic events and crimes against humanity during the 20th century have challenged the very concept of the memorial, as has the widespread disillusionment with many of the ideas and ideals that have traditionally fuelled the creation of memorials—gods and saints, national destiny and martial glory, the march of progress and technology. No longer celebrating national ideals and triumphs with heroic, self-aggrandizing figurative icons, the modern memorial is employing new techniques to pose the question of how and why we remember. Because, despite the doubting and secular nature of current society, despite doubts that anything can still be commemorated in good faith, the need to remember and honour important and terrible events remains just as vital. Architecture has historically been used and explored as an aide to memory in various ways, adept in creating immersive experiences that transcend those offered by the statue or sculptural monument. In this essay I seek to understand the role of architects and the architectural space of memorial architecture in the memorialization of tragic events and difficult histories. I’m curious how architects and designers can create spaces that guide visitors towards memory and historical justice. How does one do justice to complex histories and avoid the commodification of trauma? Memorials are often emotionally charged creations that physically represent and concretize individual and collective remembrance. To be meaningful and publicly engaging, the process of creating memorial spaces needs to be attuned to the social and cultural specificities of its place. Commemorations and memorials that ask for participation, and are able to evoke emotions in their participants, can pave the way to confront history and lead to truth and reconciliation. Of particular interest are countries facing up to their own histories, to the persecution of their own people, and how memorials act as conduits for empathy and experience. In the following pages I will look at the act of using architecture as a means of narrative and emotion, whether to provide visitors with an experience of the effects of the Holocaust on both the Jewish culture and the city of Berlin, or to enact the fundamental premise of apartheid in South Africa. Crucially though, the creation of such a memorial requires a certain crystallisation and inevitable distortion of collective memory, orchestrating who, what and how to remember. Does concretizing history in this manner actually displace and bury it? And, despite efforts by architects and designers to create sensitive, considered memorials, is the immutability of the building just too great a barrier to the flow and flux of memory?

This exploration of memorial architecture is by no means comprehensive, and since I am working from second-hand sources and unable to experience the architecture for itself, remains abstract. Therefore, I am using the words of scholars, architects and visitors to said memorials to supplement my drawings.

The Structures of Memory

Berlin, Germany 2001 Studio Daniel Libeskind The Jewish Museum Berlin, which opened to the public in 2001, exhibits the social, political and cultural history of the Jews in Germany from the fourth century to the present, explicitly presenting and integrating, for the first time in postwar Germany, the repercussions of the Holocaust. Architect Daniel Libeskind believes it is vital that commemorative architecture reflects the brutality of atrocities rather than repressing it and intended to establish and secure a Jewish identity within Berlin which was lost during WWII. Conceptually, Libeskind wanted to express feelings of absence, emptiness, and invisibility – expressions of the disappearance of the Jewish Culture. It was the act of using architecture as a means of narrative and emotion to provide visitors with an experience of the effects of the Holocaust on both the Jewish culture and the city of Berlin.

6 Fig. 1.1 and 1.2: Aerial views of the Libeskind extension

The complex spaces themselves engender a disquieting sensory experience that suggests the fraught history of Jewish presences and absences in Germany.

The Structures of Memory

The visitor enters the Baroque Kollegienhaus and then descends by stairway through the dramatic Entry Void, into the underground. The descent leads to three underground axial routes, each of which tells a different story. The Axis of the Holocaust leads to a dead end – the Holocaust Tower. The Axis of Exile leads out of the building and into the Garden of Exile and Emigration, remembering those who were forced to leave Berlin. The third and longest, the Axis of Continuity, traces a path leading up to the exhibition spaces of the museum, emphasizing the continuum of history.

Fig. 1.3 (left): Intersection of the two axes on the basement level) Fig. 1.5: Basement floor plan

10 10

Daylight penetrates the Holocaust Tower only through a narrow slit in the unheated concrete silo and any exterior sounds are heavily muffled by the walls. Many visitors experience a feeling of oppression or anxiety here.

The Structures of Memory

The interior is composed of reinforced concrete which reinforces the moments of the empty spaces and dead ends where only a sliver of light is entering the space. Libeskind said he initially intended a portion of the building to be lightless because “nobody can bring light to a holocaust”. But he changed his mind after reading an account from a holocaust survivor, who recalled a sliver of light shining through the grilles of a cattle car used to transport her to a concentration camp, and decided to add lightwells. In the Garden of Exile, forty-nine concrete stelae are laid out in 7-by-7 square on slanting ground, which gives visitors a dizzying feeling of unsteadiness and disorientation. The only vegetation is located high out of reach. Libeskind wanted this spatial experience to recall the lack of orientation and instability felt by the émigrés forced out of Germany. The architecture and the experience are a testament to Libeskind’s ability to translate human experience into an architectural composition.

Fig. 1.6 (left): The Holocaust Tower Fig. 1.7 and 1.8: The Garden of Exile

The Structures of Memory

A line of “Voids”, empty spaces about 20m tall, slices linearly through the entire building, representing the absence of Jews from German society. In order to move from one side of the museum to the other, visitors must cross one of the 60 bridges that open onto this void. The Memory Void contains a work by the Israeli artist Menashe Kadishman, who calls his installation “Shalekhet,” or “Fallen Leaves.” The ground is covered in 10,000 coarse iron faces; symbol of those lost during the Holocaust. The building is less of a museum but an experience depicting what most cannot understand.

“In projects that deal with brutality, architecture is not just an affirmation of what we already know. A shift to something unknown, even repressed, initially perhaps might be feeling like something strange or discomforting but in the long run its incorporated as part of our space, as part of understanding of the world.” - Daniel Libeskind

12 Fig. 1.10 (right): The Memory Void

13 13

The Memorial in Motion

Montgomery, Alabama, United States 2018 Equal Justice Initiative, led by Bryan Stevenson The National Memorial for Peace and Justice is the first memorial in the United States dedicated to the legacy of enslaved Black people, people terrorized by lynching, African Americans humiliated by racial segregation, and people of color burdened with contemporary presumptions of guilt and police violence. The site was conceived with the hope of creating a sober, meaningful place where people can gather and reflect on America’s history of racial inequality. Inside the memorial, more than eight hundred steel monuments hang, bearing the weight of over four thousand lynchings. Each six-foot tall column is marked with a county and state, along with the name or names of those who were lynched there.

15 15

When you enter the memorial structure, you encounter the monuments at eye level first, which lets you process that these are people. As you move through the corridors, you gradually descend down a wooden walkway, creating the effect that the monuments are hanging above you. It’s at that moment when the columns most clearly evoke black bodies hanging as they once did from tree branches. Even though symbolic, it’s a startling and unthinkable sight — the hundreds upon hundreds of columns and thousands of names, bodies, lives. “Most people’s conversations abruptly stop or quiet to a whisper when they walk in. This is sacred ground.” – John Cary, TED Ideas

17 17

The Memorial in Motion

Also at the site are duplicates of each steel column, lined up in rows like coffins, intended to be disseminated around the country to the counties [local sites] where lynchings were carried out. People in these counties can request them but they must show that they have made efforts locally to “address racial and economic injustice.”

“My vision is that this memorial will exist throughout the country, and will tell the larger story of what happened when Americans allowed terrorism and racism to traumatize our nation, to create this burden that we have yet to free ourselves from”. – Bryan Stevenson, EJI

18 18

Fig 2.5: The duplicate steel columns surrounding the memorial, with Akoto-Bamfo’s installation

Various sculptures at the National Memorial site also express how slavery evolved. Ghanaian sculptor Kwame Akoto-Bamfo’s Nkyinkyim Installation, the first work visitors encounter at the site, depicts enslaved people searching for humanity in this foreign land, while Raise Up by Hank Willis Thomas serves as a statement about our continuing challenges with police violence and presumptions of African American dangerousness and guilt.

19 19

Rather than intellectualizing the terror of lynchings as has been done in writing, photos, and films over the decades, the memorial physicalizes it.

“We think changing the visual landscape of America is critical, because the lynchings of African Americans weren’t acts of violence directed at individuals: They were acts designed to terrorize African Americans into submission. “ – Bryan Stevenson

The memorial stands in the shadow of the capital building steps, where, in 1963, Governor George Wallace declared, “Segregation now, segregation tomorrow, segregation forever.” It’s also where, two years later, the historic civil rights march from Selma to Montgomery concluded. A few blocks away, the Legacy Museum chronicles the history and continued presence of racial violence in America. These two cultural sites were created in order to rewrite, and set right, the narratives regarding the African American experience.

Fig 20 2.8 (top right): Inside the memorial Fig. 2.9 (bottom right): Inscriptions along the memorial tell specific personal stories of victims.

“Americans believe in memorials; we just seem not to believe in memorials that reflect our failings. I think we have thereby created empty spaces that leave us vulnerable to tolerating more bigotry. The monuments are intended to disrupt those empty spaces. I think if we find the courage to tell the truth about our history, about the brutality of slavery, about the horrors of lynching, about the consequences of segregation and the challenges created by ongoing manifestations of racial bias, we can create a different environment. I really do believe in truth and reconciliation. I just think they’re sequential. You have to tell the truth first.” – Bryan Stevenson 21

The Museum as Memorial

Johannesburg, South Africa 2001 Mashibane Rose Associates and GAPP Architects The Apartheid Museum illustrates the rise and fall of apartheid in South Africa, guiding visitors towards memory and historical justice. Discretely set behind an artificially-created earth mound, one finds a series of inanimate, undulating concrete walls, gabion-filled rusted cages, dry stacked rock walls and seven off-shutter concrete columns that represent the seven pillars of the constitution. Visitors may experience a strong sense of empathy with those subjected to the regime’s controlling manoeuvres, through a process of being themselves manipulated by the spaces of the museum. For the museum not only attempts to narrate apartheid South Africa in its exhibition strategies: it also performs its complexities and contradictions through the building’s location, its architecture and the physical form of its displays.

22 22

The Museum as Memorial

The entry ticket evokes segregation mechanisms by randomly cataloging the visitors between “white” and “not white” (apartheid’s ubiquitous term ‘non-whites’ perpetuating the concept of ‘whiteness’ as the norm and the ‘blackness’ of Africans as the negative, aberrant Other). This random classification forces visitors to enact the fundamental premise of apartheid, and induces responses that can range from discomfiting to frightening. For it not only divides visitors according to an arbitrary racial code, but separates families and friends in a way that is immediately affective. The focus is less on object than experience; innovative museum architecture parallels the reconfiguring of museum practice, as a focus on collecting, cataloguing and conserving gives way to proactive audience-focused agendas. Contemporary curators aim to involve viewers in more affective experiences: deliberate eliciting of subjectivity deposes apparent objectivity, with history to be perceived not merely as recounting, or even memorializing, but empathizing.

Fig. 3.3 (left top): The entrance to the museum Fig. 3.4 (left): Museum entry tickets

25 25

The confined spaces with their enclosing grids suggest incarceration, both literal detention and the social and psychological imprisonment created by the system. The dividing cage between the two corridors invokes the capricious cruelty of apartheid’s black/ white classifications, for its simulated documents belong to those whom the system designated ‘coloured’. Through this ambiguous zone, visitors on one side catch familiar yet disorienting glimpses of those on the other, suggesting the contingent relationships of different racial groups in South Africa. Through the physical experience of its visual and spatial interactions, the entrance area sets up a site of contradiction and unease.

It can be argued that, in creating a sense of ‘empathetic unsettlement’, the Apartheid Museum goes beyond simply facilitating visitor learning about apartheid in a didactic sense. The bodily awareness induced by the building and its exhibition strategies – certainly in our personal experience – engenders an increasing consciousness of self. Yet, despite the powerful responses evoked, there remains an uneasiness about the emotive strategies deployed, a concern that the Apartheid Museum commodifies trauma.

26 Fig. 3.8 (far right): Caged exhibition of documents and passes owned by black South Africans

The Memorial in the City

Nantes, France 2012 Krzysztof Wodiczko + Julian Bonder This monument is one of the largest and most important memorials in the world devoted to the slave trade and its abolition. It is a solemn reminder of Nantes’ history as the most active slave-trading port in 18th century France, paying tribute to those who struggled – and still struggle – against slavery in the world. On continental Europe, Nantes was the biggest beneficiary of the slave trade, deporting hundreds of thousands of Africans across the Atlantic. The memorial complex transforms the old docks and banks of the Loire into a space for remembrance, whose narrow chambers recall the confining barracks or hulls that held Africans captive during the Middle Passage.

Fig. 4.1 (left): Layout of the complex Fig. 4.2: The memorial as viewed from the Pont Anne de Bretagne

29 29

The Memorial in the City

Sited in a location symbolic of Nantes’ port activities, it redirects traffic routes to place memory at the heart of the city. The transformation of a space which is currently ‘empty’ into a ‘passageway’ provides a link with the ground under the city of Nantes, on both sides, land and sea… In places, visitors will find themselves hemmed in by 20th century substructures, a feeling reminiscent of the extreme confinement experienced aboard the slave ships. “We wanted a metaphorical and emotional reminder of the primarily historical, but also very current, struggle for the abolition of slavery. The lights and reflections on the river, the chosen materials, the mix of stones from the old quay, wood, the unfinished concrete… this slow immersion beneath the quays bears a universal message of solidarity and fraternity for future generations, while affirming the value of human rights.” – visual artist Krzysztof Wodiczko, and architect Julian Bonder

Fig. 4.3 (left): The underground passage along the Loire

31 31

The Memorial in the City As a site of consciousness, the Memorial’s cool demeanour masks the corporal, mental, emotional, and spiritual violence that was the European Slave Trade. There is no inherent sense of threat or anxiety evoked. It is a cerebral response to a phenomenon that was the single most devastating event suffered physically, socially and spiritually by Africans and their descendants. At the same time, its is precisely its pristine rationality that reveals the diabolic, cold, and calculating nature of an ugly, global reality that was endured longer than any other act of evil committed against any group of human beings, lasting over 400 years. - Dowoti Désir, International Review of African American Art

The Memorial opened in March 2012 amid controversy, partly because the descendant community was not directly engaged and very few people of colour, if any, had input in the design and build process. Memory requires consensus; the voices of victims, their perspectives and priorities must be considered by the state or government, especially when a country has a troubling history and a proposed site of memorial, and the culture of those being memorialized, is the subject of contention. The Memorial’s presence underscores existing tensions surrounding issues of race, multiculturalism, and Republicanism in a France that claims to be “one and indivisible.” It is hoped the Memorial will generate continued debate and permit a new rapport between Afro-descendants and the West, particularly France and her relationships with the larger African community.

32 Fig. 4.5: A window in the memorial looking across to the Palais de Justice

Since the 1990s, the people of Nantes, along with the town council, have actively sought to face their unpleasant history. For years, Nantes, like most European cities, resisted public acknowledgment of this history; descendants of slave traders as well as local businessmen and some politicians did not want it aired publicly. But local organizations, many representing people of color primarily from the Caribbean, pressed for recognition. When officials declined, they commissioned a statue of a slave breaking his chains, which was placed on a quay near the port. A few days later, the statue was desecrated, broken opponents of the memorial had rewound the chains around the statue’s ankles and broken off one of its arms, a reference to amputation being specified as a punishment for runaway slaves in the “Code Noir,” the quasi-judicial document France issued in 1685 to govern the relationship between master and slave. The desecration was a turning point. Broad popular support then emerged for building a memorial that would reflect the city’s involvement in the slave trade.

“The Memorial is not another act of contrition, but a genuine call to us all to remember past struggles in order to project ourselves into the future, fighting against all modern forms of slavery and denial of human rights in order to build a more united world.” – Jean-Marc Ayrault, Deputy Mayor of Nantes 33

The Modernist Memorial

Across former Yugoslavia 1950s-1990s ‘Spomeniks’, as they are commonly referred to in English (the Serbo-Croatian/Slovenian word for ‘monument’) are a series of partisan memorials built from the 1950s-1990s during Tito’s Socialist Federal Republic of Yugoslavia, whose primary intent was to honour its people’s resistance struggle during the People’s Liberation Struggle (1941-1945) against Axis occupation and oppression. They commemorate not only the crimes which occurred during the region’s brutal occupation, but also celebrate the ‘Revolution’ which defeated them, functioning as political tools meant to articulate the country’s vision of a new tomorrow. The monoliths towered from seasides to barren mountain-tops, standing as forces which dominated the landscape wherever they existed. The total number built is posited to be well over 40,000, but scores have now been destroyed and left derelict in the years after the wars in the 1990s that led to the disintegration of Yugoslavia. Many of these objects became detached from their original function, and thus became a dissonant heritage between differing nationalist narratives of the past. The ones that still remain intact tell a powerful and passionate story about memory, history and a future unrealized.

34 Fig. 5.1 (above): Kolašin Municipal Assembly in Kolašin, Montenegro Fig. 5.2 (right): Monument to the Revolution on Kozara, Bosnia and Herzegovina

35 35

The Modernist Memorial POGARIĆ Monument to the Revolution of the People of Moslavina (Spomenik Revolucije Naroda Moslavine) Podgarić, Croatia Dušan Džamonja, 1967

Built to commemorate the community’s rebellion and uprising against Ustaše occupying forces in the greater Moslavina and Zagreb region during the National Liberation War, while also recognizing the support structures the village created to support the war effort.

KOZARA Monument to the Revolution (Spomenik Revoluciji) Kozara National Park, Bosnia Dušan Džamonja and Vladimir Velićković, 1972

Dedicated to the fallen soldiers and civilians victims who died in the bloody Kozara Offensive in the spring of 1942, which claimed the lives of the vast majority of Partisan fighters and up to 10,000 peasant civilians.

TJENTIŠTE The Battle of Sutjeska Memorial Monument Complex in the Valley of Heroes Tjentište, Bosnia & Herzegovina Miodrag Živković and Ranko Radović, 1971 Commemorates the fighters and fallen soldiers of the Battle of the Sutjeska between Partisan fighters and Axis forces, which took place from May 15th to June 16th, 1943.

JASENOVAC Stone Flower (Kameni Cvijet) Bogdan Bogdanović, 1966

Memorial to the hundreds of thousands of victims who were executed during World War II at the Jasenovac forced labor and extermination camp which was set up and run at this location by the Independent State of Croatia (NDH) and administered by the fascist Ustaše forces.

KOLAŠIN ‘Spomen-dom’ or Kolašin Municipal (Колашин скупштине општине) Kolašin, Montenegro Marko Mušič, 1975

Assembly

A spomenik complex and town hall meant to commemorate the first assembly of the National Anti-Fascist Council of the Peoples Liberation of Montenegro and Boka in 1943, as well as the struggle of the residents of the city during the People’s Liberation Struggle.

PETROVA GORA Monument to the Uprising of the People of Kordun and Banija (Spomenik ustanku naroda Banije i Korduna) Petrova Gora National Park, Croatia Vojin Bakić, 1981 Dedicated to the deaths of ethnic-Serb peasants who died fighting against the Ustaše militia in the Petrova Gora mountains, most notably during 1941 and 1942.

KOSMAJ Monument to the Fallen Soldiers of the Kosmaj Detachment (Споменик борцима Космајског одреда) Kosmaj Mountain Park, Serbia Vojin Stojić and Gradimir Medaković, 1971

Commemorates the Partisan regiment from the Kosmaj area and Sava region and honors those who died during the National Liberation War (WWII).

GRMEĆ Monument to the Bosanska Krajina Partisan Hospital Korčanica Memorial Zone of Grmeč Mountain, Bosnia & Herzegovina Ljubomir Denković, 1979 Commemorates a secret hospital which was operated by the Partisan resistance on the slopes of this hill during WWII which treated thousands of Partisan soldiers all over the region, as well as all the medics who worked to treat injured soldiers.

ILIRSKA BISTRICA Monument on Freedom Hill (Hrib Svobode) Ilirska Bistrica, Slovenia Janez Lenassi and Živa Baraga-Moškon, 1965

Dedicated to the fighters of the 4th Yugoslavian Army who liberated this area during WWII. The remains of 284 of these soldiers who died during this fight are interred in a mass tomb beneath the monument. In addition, this monument also honors the Partisan Prekomorski (Over-seas) brigades who battled and fought in foreign lands.

ILINDEN / KRUŠEVO Ilinden Memorial (Споменик „Илинден“) Kruševo, Macedonia Jordan and Iskra Grabul, 1974

Commemorates the resistance fighters who took part in the Ilinden Uprising of 1903 against the Ottoman Empire, while also remembering the Partisan fighters of National Liberation War.

Within the structure at Petrova Gora, over its thousands of meters of floor space, was originally intended to be a 250 person congress hall, a library, reading room, a cafe and a museum which housed hundreds of documents, relics and artifacts related to the battle and the history of ethnic-Serbian struggles in the region. However, the vast majority of these amenities were never fully realized in the years afters its opening.

During the fracturing of the Yugoslav state and the erosion of the unifying Yugoslav identity and ideology, ethnic nationalism, religiously-aligned and anti-Communist ideologies spread like wildfire. As a result, memorials were targeted, and orphaned from the nation that built them. The monument at Petrova Gora fell into disrepair and was attacked by vandals. Over the subsequent decades it became completely defaced, looted and demolished, with all its historical artifacts and relics contained within its museum and archives being taken or destroyed.

The Modernist Memorial The change in approach to aesthetical design of memorials from statues, symbols and icons to abstracted modernism inﬂuenced the change in their symbolic nature. These memorials and sites which seemed like they came from the future or outer space were no longer only spreading the collective interpretation of the memory on the Second World War events, but moreover, and more importantly, were spreading the message of the revolution, the arrival of a brighter future. As architects of these memorials released Yugoslav creative potential by abstracting memorials’ designs, they relieved memorials of symbolical connotations and in such a way liberated the artifact of the burden of remembering. Thus, modernist memorial discourse enabled manipulation with collective memory in accordance with the ideological needs of Yugoslav socialist authorities. In such way memory gained power to completely transform what it had created – the society. "Why should one remember a revolution as a past event, if revolution can be, perhaps should be, conceived as an unfinished task and a process that is open to the future? If history is considered as open-ended, then the only meaningful memorial practice in the case of revolutions is to keep the place of transformation open for further change." – Gal Kirn, political theorist

Fig 5.5 (left): Monument to the Uprising of the People of Kordun and Banija, Petrova Gora National Park, Croatia Fig. 5.6 (above): The Battle of Sutjeska Memorial, Tjentište, Bosnia & Herzegovina

The Modernist Memorial

Did this modernist appraoch work? In designing the monument to victims of the concentration camp at Jasenovac, Croatia, it was not the architect’s intention to make a monument that directly embodied the atrocities which occurred here, as it was thought having the visitor viscerally confronted with such imagery would be too horrific and sordid. Bogdanović chose the form of flower petals opening up to the sky as a representational shape, symbolizing not only life and rebirth, but also, the overcoming of suffering, eternal renewal and, most importantly, forgiveness.

However, upon the revelation of its design in the 1960s, some ethnic-Serbs were horrified by the decontextualized and ambiguous design of the Stone Flower. These vocal critics considered its modernized flower shape, symbolizing reconciliation and forgiveness, to be a tawdry and insufficient memorial to such a horrific and monstrous crime (at which thousands of ethnic-Serbs, Jews and Roma were killed). Some extreme opponents even demanded it be torn down. Many exclaimed such remarks as, "Who are you to grant these criminals forgiveness?" or "Why does this memorial not depict the crime... Why are the deeds being covered up?”

40 Fig. 5.7 (top): Stone Flower at Jasenovac Memorial Site, Croatia Fig. 5.8 (right): Monument to Korčanica, Grmeč Mountain, Bosnia & Herzegovina

“Memorialisation is sometimes defined as the process of taming, domesticating past horrors; but at Grmeč that process had failed. This WWII memorial park had been poisoned by subsequent conflict, its message of peace and resilience subverted by its own tragic history. For all its good intentions – the swaggering post-war optimism of its architectural vision – there was something nasty about the monument on Grmeč Mountain. Inside this dead flower, a split-level sanctum that had once contained a memorial museum was now torn open, stripped to leave little more than ragged concrete. A once-grand staircase spiralled down into darkness and decay.” - Darmon Richter, Ex Utopia

41 41

It has been suggested that in their references to history, monuments may not remember events so much as bury them altogether beneath layers of national myths and explanations. Critics argue that rather than preserving public memory, the monument displaces it altogether, supplanting a community’s memory work with its own material form. It is as if once we assign monumental form to memory, we have to some degree divested ourselves of the obligation to remember. Furthermore, by insisting that its meaning is as fixed as its place in the landscape, the monument seems oblivious to the essential mutability in all cultural artifacts, the ways the significance in all art evolves over time. Half a century after the defeat of the Third Reich, contemporary artists in Germany still have difficulty separating the monument there from its fascist past. German memory-artists are heirs to a double-edged postwar legacy: a deep distrust of monumental forms in light of their systematic exploitation by the Nazis, and a profound desire to distinguish, through memory, their generation from that of the killers. One of the most intriguing results of Germany’s memorial conundrum has been the advent of so-called “anti-monuments”: memorial spaces conceived to challenge the very premise of the monument.

Words for this chapter by James E. Young

Fig. 6.2 (above): Bibliothek, a memorial in memory of the burning of books, Bebelplatz, Berlin

43 43

To commemorate the infamous Nazi book burning of May 10, 1933, the City of Berlin invited Micha Ullman, an Israeli-born conceptual and installation artist, to design a monument for the Bebelplatz. Today, the cobblestone expanse of this plaza is still empty of all forms except for the figures of visitors who stand there and peer down through a window in the ground plane into the ghostly white, underground room of empty shelves Ullman has installed.

Another example is the Monument Against Fascism, designed by Jochen and Esther Gerz as a self-consuming memorial that leaves behind only the rememberer and the memory of a memorial. Unveiled in Harburg, Hamburg in 1986, this twelve-meter high square pillar was made of hollow aluminum, plated with a thin layer of soft, dark lead. A steel-pointed stylus with which to score the soft lead was attached at each corner by a length of cable. As one-and-a-half-meter sections were covered with memorial graffiti, the monument was lowered into the ground, progressively sunk in eight stages between 10th October 1986 and 10th November 1993. The more actively visitors participated, the faster they covered each section with their names, the sooner the monument disappeared. Inscribed on the monument was: We invite the citizens of Harburg and visitors to the town, to add their names here to ours. In doing so, we commit ourselves to remain vigilant. As more and more names cover this 12 meter tall lead column, it will gradually be lowered into the ground. One day, it will have disappeared completely and the site of the Harburg mon against fascism will be empty. In the end, it is only we ourselves who can rise up against injustice. - Jochen Gerz and Esther Shalev-Gerz The memorial vanishes, but so too do the traditional notions of the monument's performance - remembering forever a vanished people with a perpetually unfinished, ever-vanishing monument.

The Anti-Memorial When the city of Kassel invited artists to consider ways to rescue one of its destroyed historical monuments - the Aschrott-Brunnen, built by the prominent Jewish industrialist Sigmund Aschrott local artist Horst Hoheisel decided that neither a preservation of its remnants nor its mere reconstruction would do. For Hoheisel, even the fragment was a decorative lie, suggesting itself as the remnant of a destruction no one knew very much about. How does one remember an absence? In this case, by reproducing it. Hoheisel proposed a "negative-form" monument, the negative space of the absent monument now constituting its phantom shape in the ground. As have the Gerzes in Hamburg and Ullman in Berlin, Hoheisel has left nothing but the visitors themselves standing in remembrance, left to look inward for memory.

“The sunken fountain is not the memorial at all. It is only history turned into a pedestal, an invitation to passersby who stand upon it to search for the memorial in their own heads. For only there is the memorial to be found.”

— Horst Hoheisel

Fig. 6.3 (top left): Bebelplatz Fig. 6.4 (bottom left): Monument Against Fascism, Hamburg-Harburg, 1986-93 Fig. 6.5 and 6.6 (above): Aschrottbrunnen and its memorial

The Anti-Memorial

Horts Hoheisel took his meditation on absensces one step further among the hundreds of submissions in the 1995 competition for a German national “memorial to the murdered Jews of Europe,” one seemed an especially uncanny embodiment of the impossible questions at the heart of Germany’s memorial process. Hoheisel proposed a simple, if provocative anti-solution to the memorial competition: blow up the Brandenburg Gate, grind its stone into dust, sprinkle the remains over its former site, and then cover the entire memorial area with granite plates. How better to remember a destroyed people than by a destroyed monument? Rather than commemorating the destruction of a people with the construction of yet another edifice, Hoheisel would mark one destruction with another destruction. Rather than filling in the void left by a murdered people with a positive form, the artist would carve out an empty space in Berlin by which to recall a now-absent people. Rather than concretizing and thereby displacing the memory of Europe’s murdered Jews, the artist would open a place in the landscape to be filled with the memory of those who come to remember Europe’s murdered Jews. A landmark celebrating Prussian might and crowned by a chariot-borne Quadriga, the Roman goddess of peace, would be demolished to make room for the memory of Jewish victims of German might and peacelessness. In fact, perhaps no single emblem better represents the conflicted, self-abnegating motives for memory in Germany today than the vanishing monument.

JEWISH MUSEUM BERLIN Andenmatten, S., Walsh, C., & Wisnlewski, J. (2011). Case Study - Jewish Museum Berlin by Daniel Libeskind . New York: Renesslaer Polytechnic Institute. Mairs, J. (2015, November 19). Architecture should not be comforting, says Daniel Libeskind. Retrieved from Dezeen: https://www. dezeen.com/2015/11/19/daniel-libeskind-architcture-should-not-be-comforting-memorials-ground-zero-masterplan-jewish-museum-berlin/[Accessed: 26/04/21] Mindel, L. F. (2015, April 30). A Tour of Daniel Libeskind’s Jewish Museum Berlin. Retrieved from Architectural Digest: https:// www.architecturaldigest.com/gallery/daniel-libeskind-jewish-museum-berlin-slideshow. [Accessed: 23/04/21] Studio Libeskind. (n.d.). Jewish Museum Berlin. Retrieved from Studio Libeskind: https://libeskind.com/work/jewish-museum-berlin/ [Accessed:11/05/21]

NATIONAL MEMORIAL FOR PEACE AND JUSTICE 60 Minutes. (2020). 2018 - Inside the memorial to victims of lynching. [Online video]. Available at: https://www.youtube.com/ watch?v=uHQK1rNd7Qo&t=473s. [Accessed: 29/04/2021] Cary, J. (2018, May 4). “This is sacred ground”: a visit to the lynching memorial in Alabama. Retrieved from TED Ideas: https://ideas.ted.com/this-is-sacred-ground-a-visit-to-the-lynching-memorial-in-alabama/ [Accessed: 18/04/21] Equal Justice Initiative. (n.d.). The National Memorial for Peace and Justice. Retrieved from Equal Justice Initiative: Museum and Memorial: https://museumandmemorial.eji.org/memorial [Accessed: 18/04/21] Marcoux, S., & Sanneh, S. (2020, June 1). How a Group of Lawyers Is Using Design to Change What We Know About Systemic Racism and Racial Violence in America. Retrieved from Veranda: https://www.veranda.com/travel/a30920232/national-memorial-peace-justice-design/ [Accessed: 26/04/21] Robinson, C. (2018, April 25). A Lynching Memorial is Opening. The Country Has Never Seen Anything Like It. Retrieved from New York Times: https://www.nytimes.com/2018/04/25/us/lynching-memorial-alabama.html [Accessed: 11/05/21] Stevenson, B. (2018, May). Bryan Stevenson Talks About the National Memorial for Peace and Justice and the Legacy Museum. Retrieved from Artforum: https://www.artforum.com/print/201805/talks-about-the-national-memorial-for-peace-and-justiceand-the-legacy-museum-from-enslavement-to-mass-incarceration-75051 [Accessed: 03/05/21] TED. (2016). Architecture that’s built to heal | Michael Murphy. [Online Video]. Available at: https://www.youtube.com/ watch?v=MvXZzKZ3JYQ. [Accessed: 21/04/2021]

APARTHEID MUSEUM Jones, A. (2017, December 16). The Apartheid Museum – proof that architecture can liberate. Retrieved from Matie Media: https:// www.matiemedia.org/apartheid-museum-proof-architecture-can-liberate/ [Accessed: 05/05/21] Martínez Sosa, M. (2019, September 27). Apartheid Museum: tourism, memory & historical justice. Retrieved from Cultoural: http://cultoural.com/wp/en/2019/07/07/apartheid-museum-tourism-memory-historical-justice/ [Accessed: 11/05/21] Rankin, E., & Schmidt, L. (2009). The Apartheid Museum: Performing a Spatial Dialectics. Journal of Visual Culture, Vol. 8 (1). Roodt Architechts. (n.d.). Apartheid Museum. Retrieved from Roodt Architects: https://roodt.blinkin.co.za/apartheids-museum-2/ [Accessed: 12/05/21]

MEMORIAL TO THE ABOLITION OF SLAVERY Cork, T. (202, October 26). Does Bristol need a slavery memorial or museum and what would it look like? Retrieved from Bristol Post: https://www.bristolpost.co.uk/news/bristol-news/bristol-need-slavery-memorial-museum-4629068 [Accessed: 28/04/21] Désir, D. (n.d.). The Memorial to the Abolition of Slavery in Nantes, France. Retrieved from The International Review of African American Art PLus: http://iraaa.museum.hamptonu.edu/page/The-Memorial-to-the-Abolition-of-Slavery-in-Nantes%2C-France [Accessed: 27/04/21] Furuto, A. (2012, July 26). Memorial to the Abolition of Slavery / Wodiczko + Bonder. Retrieved from ArchDaily: https://www. archdaily.com/256516/memorial-to-the-abolition-of-slavery-wodiczko-bonder [Accessed: 27/04/21] Roger Williams University. (2021). Works on Memory: Reflections & Practices – Memorial to the Abolition of Slavery in Nantes, France. [Online video]. Available at: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HvChA3hvCCk&t=1212s [Accessed: 14/04/21] Rubin, A. J. (2018, October 31). They Threw Themselves Into the Sea, 14 Black Women. New York Times, p. Section A page 6.

‘SPOMENIKS’ Baumann, U. (2020). “Past Future Concrete” revisited: Ex-Yugoslav monuments shaped as destinations via online image practices. Freiburg: University of Freiburg. Cascone, S. (2018, July 26). MoMA’s Astonishing New Architectural Show Reveals Yugoslavia’s Ruins to Be More Than Just Monuments of an Alien Civilization. Retrieved from Artnet: https://news.artnet.com/art-world/moma-yugoslavia-spomeniks-concrete-utopia-1323635 [Accessed: 15/05/21] Hatherley, O. (2016, November 29). Concrete clickbait: next time you share a spomenik photo, think about what it means. Retrieved from The Calvert Journal: https://www.calvertjournal.com/articles/show/7269/spomenik-yugoslav-monument-owen-hatherley [Accessed: 23/04/21] Kirn, G. (2014). Transnationalism in Reverse: From Yugoslav to Post-Yugoslav Memorial Sites. In C. De Cesari, & A. Rigney, Transnational Memory: Circulation, Articulation, Scales (pp. 313-338). Berlin: De Gruyter. Niebyl, D. (n.d.). Spomenik Database. Retrieved from Spomenik Database: https://www.spomenikdatabase.org/ [Accessed: 14/05/21}

Richter, D. (2016, September 30). Myth and Memory in the Balkans: The ‘Spomeniks’ of Former Yugoslavia. Retrieved from Ex Utopia: https://www.exutopia.com/myth-memory-in-the-balkans-the-spomeniks-of-former-yugoslavia/ [Accessed: 22/04/21] Richter, D. (2017, March 31). The Bad Place: Slime & Foreboding at the Grmec Spomenpark in Bosnia. Retrieved from Ex Utopia: https://www.exutopia.com/the-bad-place-slime-foreboding-at-the-grmec-spomenpark-in-bosnia/ [Accessed: 22/04/21] Stevanovic, N. (2017). Architectural Heritage of Yugoslav-Socialist Character: Ideology, Memory and Identity. Barcelona: Universidad Politècnica de Catalunya.

THE ANTI-MEMORIAL Handler Spitz, E. (2005, Winter). Loss as Vanished Form: On the Anti-Memorial Sculptures of Horst Hoheisel. American Imago Vol. 62, No. 4, 419-433. Sacco, N. (2017, September 25). Counter Monuments, Interpretation, and Interactive Memory. Retrieved from Monuments in History: https://monumentsinhistory.wordpress.com/2017/09/25/counter-monuments-interpretation-and-interactive-memory/ [Accessed: 14/05/21] Young, J. E. (1992). The Counter-Monument: Memory against Itself in Germany Today. Critical Inquiry , Winter, 1992, Vol. 18, No. 2 (Winter), 267-296. Young, J. E. (1993). The Texture of Memory: Holocaust Memorials and Meaning. London: Yale University Press. Young, J. E. (1999, Fall). Memory and Counter-Memory. Harvard Design Magazine No. 9: Constructions of Memory: On Monuments Old and New.

OTHER SOURCES Levinson, N. (1999). Introduction. Harvard Design Magazine No. 9: Constructions of Memory: On Monuments Old and New. Snyman, E. (2016). A Memory Work Project for Marikana: ‘Attenuating’ the memory of the Marikana Massacre through modes of remembrance. Gqeberha: Nelson Mandela Metropolitan University School of Architecture. Tanovic, S. (2015). Memory in Architecture: Contemporary Memorial Projects and their Predecessors. Delft: Delft Technical University. Tanovic, S. (2019). Architecture and Collective Remembrance at the Tunnel D-B Memorial Site in Sarajevo. Change Over Time; Phidelphia Vol. 9 No. 1, 14-33.

A visual essay exploring different forms of memorial architecture, investigating how architects and designers create spaces for remembering and commemorating difficult histories. The memorials assessed in this essay, ranging from monument to museum, seek in different ways to confront the horrors of the past, often committed by a nation on its own people, whether by attempting to evoke the experience of persecution through special design and material choice or just creating spaces for remembrance, conversation and reconciliation. Drawn and edited by Mereida Fajardo Published at the University of the West of England, 2021 52