Shared roots

REcall

Shared Roots Book

workshop Falstad 24-30 June 2013

edited by The Chalk Circle: Micol Rispoli, Emanuela Murro, Daniela Iannella, LĂşa Coderch, Giovanni Murro

Shared Roots book REcall Docs

Shared Roots Book REcall is a research project founded by EC Culture 2007-13 Programme (n. 2012 - 0927 / 001 - 001 CU7 COOP7) focused on the possible roles Museography can play when dealing with Difficult Heritage such as the ones coming from conflicts and wars. REcall wishes to envision new ways to the handling of Painful Places & Stories going behind any traditional approach: there is the need to shift from the ‘simply’ commemoration attitude to a more active involvement and participation of people in/with Places & Stories, through design strategies of ‘reappropriation’ (www.recall-project.polimi.it).

The views expressed in this document are the sole responsibility of the authors and the European Commission cannot be held responsible for any use which may be made of the information contained therein.

edited by The Chalk Circle: Micol Rispoli, Emanuela Murro, Daniela Iannella, Lúa Coderch, Giovanni Murro

REcall Consortium POLIMI-Politecnico di Milano - Coordinator - (Italy) AAU-Aalborg University (Denmark) NTUN-Norwegian University of Science and Technology (Norway) UNEW-Newcastle University (United Kingdom) Fasltad Museum, Falstad (Norway) Museo della Resistenza, Turin (Italy) Associated Partners Ergan Foundation Romsdal museet Routes Agency Snark © The Authors: Creative Commons: license CC BY SA 3.0

REcall Docs

Table of contents

9

REcall project

11 About 13

Shared Roots

15

History_an introduction

19

About Falstad

25 Digging 29 Spreading 45

Thriving

55

The Chalk Circle

57

About us

61

Bibliography

REcall project

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About REcall seeks to formulate a new role of the architectural environment based on invigorated research on the cultural landscapes of WWI and WWII and strengthen the attention on the management, documentation and preservation of this heritage.The project regards heritage as a dynamic process, involving the declaration of our memory of past events and actions that have been refashioned for present day purposes such as identity, community, legalisation of power and authority. The project group see that any cultural landscape - i.e. architecture - is characterized by its dynamism, temporality and changing priorities in social perception.We stress that the research we develop will generate the values to be protected tomorrow. On the strength of this account, our project proposes the development of sustainable and innovative architectural practices for reuse, valorisation and communication of the XXth Century European Conflict Heritage considered as Cultural Landscape.

Shared Roots

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History_an introduction Norway maintained a policy of neutrality during World War I and the post-war years, and only saw a need to strengthen its military when tensions grew in Europe in the late 1930.

Endeavouring to remain neutral, Norway negotiated favorable trade treaties both with the United Kingdom and Germany, but both these countries had a strategic interest in denying the other access to Norway. Norway was important to Germany for two primary reasons: access to British waters for possible invasion of Britain, and transportation of its wintertime shipments of iron ore from Sweden (for steel and weapons production) through Norway’s ice-free port of Narvik. German attacked by sea and air early in the morning of 9 April 1940.

Most of Norway’s plans to increase its military strength had not been completed in time. Local resistance and Allied counter-attacks delayed the capture of Oslo just long enough to allow the Norwegian government and royal family to escape. Norway was soon overpowered. By the end of May, Allied troops were withdrawn from Norway to fight the quickly advancing German offensive in France, leaving Norway to Nazi occupation.

Also like other Nazi occupied countries, a local resistance front grew.

Earlier counter-attacks and assaults shortly after the invasion were improvised and disorganised, but groups specialised and professionalised in the course of the war (Milorg, Osvald Group, Company Linge, etc,). Sabotage and resistance efforts provoked swift and bloody reprisals from the Nazis.

Following Hitler’s suicide and the taking of Berlin by Allied and Soviet forces in April 1945, Dwight D. Eisenhower sent a telegram

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to Norway demanding the surrender of the German army there.

To the relief of the nation, on 7th May the Germans made a radio announcement of their capitulation. Overnight, 40.000 armed Milorg members seized back the Royal Palace, main police station and other public buildings. The German surrender took effect at midnight on 8th May. Norway’s Crown Prince Olav returned to the country on May 14th with a 21 man delegation of the exiled government, and on 7th June King Hakon VII and the rest of the royal family arrived back in Oslo.

10,262 Norwegians lost their lives during the war, around 700 of these were Jews sent to concentration camps in Germany and Poland.

Large areas - especially in the Finnmark region - has been destroyed by bombing or the German ‘scorched earth’ policy. Around 50,000 Norwegians were found guilty of treason after the war. They had been members of the Norwegian national socialist party, Nasjonal Samling, who sympathised and collaborated with the Nazis.

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About Falstad Nazi German authorities first visited Falstad in August 1941 with the hope of making it a center for the Lebensborn51 program in Norway, but found it unsuitable for this use. Originally, Falstad was a boarding school for boys since 1921, founded as part of the general movement in Europe to reform the penal system, especially for children. Because the resemblance with a prison building, Falstad began to serve as internment and transit camp in late summer of 1941, mostly used for political prisoners from Nazioccupied territories (from at least 13 different countries).

The main characteristic of the camp was forced, hard, and largely meaningless labor. Degradations and abuse were commonplace, particularly under the administration of SS-Hauptscharführer Gogol and Edward F. Lambrecht. The camp commanders used the nearby forest as a site for extrajudicial executions of prisoners of war, and executions following show trial of political and Jewish prisoners. In fact the camp also became notorious for its use as a transit camp for deportation of Norvegian Jews to Auschwitz.

The Lebensborn Project (positive eugenics) was one of several programs started to produce the crazed about preserve and/or establish a society composed solely of individuals of “pure Aryan race”. Only at the end of the second world war it was possible to find that such a program was to build secret residences where to connect human individuals “racially pure” in order to concieve. Most women, who chosen to do this, were combined with the soldiers of the Wehrmacht, Luftwaffe or Kriegsmarine officers. The project began in 1935 and was initially conceived to assist SS wives during pregnancy, but soon turned into a racial selection process. Since 1938 the direction was entrusted to the Persönlicher Stab RFSS, in practice the central personnel office of the SS. In this sense, his role was changed. The headquarters of the Lebensborn Eingetragener Verein (company registered source of life) became the meeting point between officers of the SS and German women “racially pure”.

The ultimate aim was the children’s world of pure Germanic strain. After birth, children were separated from their parents and entrusted to the SS organization that took care of their education. Not all officers of the SS Lebensborn project were enlisted: membership was voluntary. At the beginning of 1940, with the occupation of Denmark and Norway in operation Weserübung, Nazi Germany had provided the lands on which start the project.

Special facilities were built hospitals, geriatric wards and homes where mothers could continue the pregnancy and give birth to their children in excellent living conditions.

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In total, 4.500 people, of whom 200 women, where deported from Falstad and later were sent to other camps in Germany or Poland, or to Grini, in Norway. In the period between 1942 and 1943, at least 220 internees where shot in the nearby forest. During the beginnig of May 1945, the camp authorities sought to exhume and hide the bodies of their victims, sinking about 25 in the fjord near the camp. The exact death toll of the whole camp period remains unknown, because the camp authorities burned as many documents as they could before the liberation in 1945. After the Second World War, 3.000 members of the Norwegian Nazi Party where imprisoned in Falstad. In 1949 the camp was closed and regained its original function as a boarding school.

Falstad Museum was established in connection with the liberation anniversary in 1995, and was arranged in the basement of the main building that was the SS-Strafgefangenenlager Falstad. The Centre was established in 2000 and now it is a national training and documentation center for prisoners of war history, humanitarian law and human rights.

The pathway that leads from the Camp area to the former execution site in the Falstad Forest was recently established. It is about 1.7 km long and doesn’t follow a specific historical route between the camp and the forest, but runs along the creek Byaelva and begins near the former waste dump of the camp.

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Digging “The trace is the presence of an absence.” ( Jacques Derrida, Of Grammatology)

The memories of the past and the official story leave their mark in the history of the landscape52 even in what is partially removed: those homeless memories that create a space where the past translates through individual or collective emotions.

This could be possible through reading, observing and selecting data, signs and figures present at the place, and our effort to try reinterpret them, referring to other real and imaginary places. André Corboz33, in The land as a palimpsest, claims that the territory as the city are stratified over time listings artifacts, rich traces and from these we have to begin their transformation project. He recognizes culture as a fundamental dimension of the landscape and territory, whereby is also defined by the collective imagination of the communities living there, has its own semantic dimension, which is adherent to the fact.

This makes the project and the space able to engage in similar, though different inhabitant and autobiographical writings, evocative and emotional processes.

In this project the trace44 is the landscape. As Renato Bocchi wrote: “I’m fascinated thinking landscape as a palimpsest of laminated signs, traces, of memories, of scripture, and believe the project like overwriting on the schedule: an interpretative overwrite, but in We define landscape (both natural or urban) a territory, as perceived by people, whose character is derived from the interactions of natural and anthropic factors.

3 Cfr. A. Corboz, Le territoire comme palimpseste et autres essays, Besançon, Editions de l’Imprimeur, 2001.

4 We call traces individual fragments that, assembled, attempt to construct and deconstruct an imaginary, both individual or collective.

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turn has its own internal logic, capable of giving relational reading of things and spaces between things that can reveal schedule”55.

The idea of a beloved one dying in a remote place, ties you to the place. This could also be thought as a bond: someone is taking care of you, looking for you, recognizing you as a presence.

The theme of absence that becomes presence features many works of contemporary artists. As in Doris Salcedo’s installation Plegaria Muda (2008-2010), consisting of about 162 units, each unit being formed by a pair of wooden tables lying one upturned on top of the other; the surfaces of these are separated by a thick layer of Colombian earth. The soil is traversed by an irrigation system that sustains a sparse smattering of vegetable life, which bursts through the top of each inverted table. On first view, the visitor is challenged by the almost perfect alignment of morphologically identical structures, which resemble a gigantic archive. However, on approaching the piece, this impression is disturbed by an eruption of organic detail. Between 2003 and 2009, about 1,500 marginalized civilians were recruited by the Colombian army, presumably for work, but were instead removed to remote locations, murdered, and buried in mass graves without any kind of identification; their bodies were subsequently presented as guerrilla fighter causalities.

By digging out the dead, and, in doing so, also revolving the viewers, installing them as participants in a silent mourning for the victims of extra-judicial killings. In fact, the installation transports the viewer into a dialectical atmosphere, which captures much of what Walter Benjamin meant with his concept of “dialectical image” - an image produced by the conflict between two juxtaposed experiences from different times, carrying contradictory and irreconcilable meanings and narratives. This dialectical tension, between the stable image of an archived event and the unstable experience of its re-installation, is, therefore, essential, ensuring the work transcends the simple terrain of aesthetic efficiency (as a museum object) and installing, the possibility of a real trial, impeaching the archive’s and history’s tendency to pacify, erase, and hide the wounds.

Renato Bocchi, Narrative structures and landscape project. Tracks for a story, in Sara Marini, Cristina Barbiani (a cura di), The broadcast landscape and design culture, Quodlibet, Macerata, 2010.

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Spreading

Visiting Falstad has made a deep impression on us, both the woods and the fjord still hold grim secrets. Both a memorial and human rights centre, Falstad is joining the threads of the past and future.

Through education, documentation and research on the history of prisoners of war, humanitarian law and human rights, the centre aims to foster a critical, analytical, forward-looking approach and help to build a future where solidarity, human dignity and compassion strengthen their position as fundamental values, both in Norway and in the whole world.

Falstad is a place for remembering, learning and moving forward wiser, more committed, better equipped. The only thing we can meaningfully say after experiencing Falstad is this: we will not forget.

The landscape is an expression of civilization and culture by translating into recognizable values at a given community and a definite historical period. Thanks to its ability to reveal the complex relationship between nature and history, the landscape becomes a place of memory and interpretation of the story through nature.

The traces and signs of a territory shall enter into a dialogue with this integration, creating an emotional relationship between individual perceptions and history. Within the landscape, the simultaneous presence of present and past sends the collective memory of the territory, and transforms the garden into a cultural container where the landscape takes on the character of the life and soul of lived spaces. The landscape is in fact really grasped when it exceeds the objective discovering secret order representation through a complete dissolution of the ego. The memory of a landscape is an affective state of the human soul through which certain knowledge (perceptions) come to light through the stimulation of creativity and memory. Falstad is a complex ecosystem, with many things

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happening in those very same spaces (different layers). We were trying to, as newcomers, experience the place in its complexity. The first thing that we felt when we arrived there was the overwhelming presence of the landscape. The landscape in Falstad is, after all, beautiful, and full of life. It is moving how the landscape has witnessed many things - that place being a concentration camp, amongst other things - and yet always manages to carry on, integrating each new event and also changing.

The Shared Roots project will foresees: 1. the reconstruction of greenhouse where it was and what it was like. Working under the surface and also on the surface will lead to a growth in relation to the ground, how the content of the underground affects the way the plants on surface could look. The different layers create a landscape that does constantly change, in which suggestions emerging from the local tracks - present or absent - live together and evoke many other places, real or imaginary, that maybe exist in our memory and that respond to the questions posed by the site and by the commitment; 2. an accommodation, along a first stretch of trail, of a series of plates with each flower to a country divided by a COR-TEN steel sheet (5m x 1m x 0,02m), anchored to the ground with a plinth. Each slab is silk-screened with the border of the country of origin of flowers, and a zenith illuminating device is mounted and directed on each plate for light at night; 3. the installation of a second stretch of the trail along the path, before the entrance to the woods, with a COR-TEN steel plate at each end overlooking a field where you mix the flowers from all countries. Small COR-TEN steel benches allow for moments of rest along the two sections paved with teak iroko planks.

As the garden needs a cyclical care, we are obviously facing seasonal and changing traces: a monument - both ephemeral and per-

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manent - that appears and disappears, and changes as time goes by. A way of reproduction of the lost original, tangible memory of what is no longer there. It, of course, responds to an adaptive cycle: many naturals elements from many places, each having their own resilience56. A war affects human relations in many ways. It is interesting to focus on those bonds created during that difficult time that were based on love, affection and mutual care. The life of many people got linked forever to Falstad, no matter where they came from. As an example of those bonds created, there’s a constant flux of people travelling from around Europe to Falstad to visit the place.

Hence the path should work as a device to start building - and further developing - a community (within the local/national institutions, associations, private citizens and international partners), in order to strengthen a sense of belonging. People would become part of a community, through sharing and also understanding something that is partially concealed.

About flowers to be used in our intervention, we selected the various species according to some of the nationalities of the prisoners in the camp.

Please, see them listed as follows: RED POPPY - Poland

(as known as flower of remembrance)

It is an herbaceous annual plant. The seed have to be sown in autumn in a secure environment and then transplanted in April/May. The plant is extremely productive, in one summer comes to bloom more than 400 flowers. As flower lasts only one day, do not always The resilience is the ability of a biological entity, or generally of an ecosystem to respond to a perturbation, by resisting damage and recovering quickly and finally changing. So we call resilient a system that can evolve into multiples forms, ensuring preservation of the vitality of the functions and structures of the system itself.

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have the time to be fertilized, therefore to ensure an adequate production of seeds, it is necessary that the flowers are very numerous.

RED CLOVER (Trifolium pratense) - Denmark This plant has a good resistance to cold climat and has a tolerance to soil acidity to ph 6.6/7.6. It requires regular water intakes.

Clover varieties growing in Northern Europe may have life up to 4/5 years. It needs to be planted around February/March and has a slow growth during the first year.

LILY - France The meaning of this flower in military language is ‘be prepared to face any adversity’. It needs to be planted in draining soils, to be exposed to the sun and sheltered from the wind. It can be put in place in spring or autumn (where there is need for greater supply of manure). It also needs frequent repotting and copious watering.

WHITE ROSE - Finland

(The Order of the White Rose - is one of three official orders in Finland, along with the Order of the Cross of Liberty, and the Order of the Lion of Finland. It was established by Gustaf Mannerheim in his capacity as regent on January 28, 1919. The name comes from the nine roses argent in the coat of arms of Finland)

Planting in October or January/February, the white rose can be grown on the ground or in a pot. Needs a good exposure to the sun and protected from draughts.

TULIP - Holland The tulip symbolizes rebirth. The bulbs can be stored in a dark place until autumn, when they are buried in a fresh and deep soil.

They bloom in spring.

BROOM - Turkey The broom is a perennial plant that blooms in spring and summer.

Cultivated in the garden or in a pot, fits high and low temperatures. It symbolizes, being flexible and tough, the man who knows how to accept the truth about his condition.

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THISTLE - Sweden It is the is a symbol of isolation and loneliness. The thistle is a perennial herb which it’s planted in April and May. Flowering occurs from October to December. It can be grown in absence of light.

MIMOSA (Acacia dealbata) - ex Yugoslavia It may appear as a tree or shrub characterised by rich yellow bloom and bushed leaves that compose a large irregular shaped hat. The Mimosa is grown either in pots that in open land, can reach considerable heights. It symbolizes strenght.

HOP (Homulus lupulus) - ex Czechoslovakia Hop is a climbing perennial plant of the family of Cannabacee with heart-shaped leaves and oval, which pulverized and dried female inflorescences are used to spice the beer. It stands for injustice.

ROSEMARY (Rosmarinus officinalis) - Hungary The branches of this shrub was used in antiquity in rites and funeral ones for the characteristics that were attributed to ward off evil spirits. Its scent, very persistent, was equated to the memory, the constancy, devotion to the memory.

CORNFLOWER - Germany According to classical mythology it heals by the poison of a snake’s bite, in medieval symbolism the flower assumes the image of Jesus that has defeated the devil (Snake). It symbolizes carefree and happiness.

VINCA (Periwinkle) - Belgium Over time, the meaning of periwinkle has taken on many meanings but, according to the most recent, represents spiritual harmony, suggested probably as symbol of the adaptability of the small shrub to different climates and grows easily to dense cover. A bunch of these showy blue flowers-periwinkle, Lilac-Blue, purple or pink, shows the love that you feel for those who receive it (being the love interest, the bride, a family member or a friend), while the white flowering reveals to the recipient the pleasure of remembering it.

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ERICA - Norway Erica grows as landscape or garden plants for its floral effect. It associates well with conifers and a frequently seen in planting schemes as massed ground cover beneath varieties of dwarf conifers. It is capable of producing flower colour throughout the year.

This plant can also be grown in tubs or window boxes to provide interest through autumn and into winter.

MARIGOLD (Calendula) - FĂŚr Ă˜er Islands It symbolizes the pain. It should be exposed to light and planted in a soft soil in September/October. It blooms a month later.

CARNATION (Dianthus) - ex URSS. Associated with grief. It requires sunny exposures, soil rich in organic matter and minerals, compact limestone, and dry. It is multiplied with sowing, by means of cuttings and division of tufts.

Annual species are sown in spring or trailer in February, with flowering after 6 months. The industrially grown perennials as annuals as well as sowing, are multiplied by scion in winter, with mats sheltered form frost; the blossoming begins in September/October until next spring.

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Thriving The project will feature that people from other countries could send the seeds to the camp and start to take care of this memory garden. We will seek cooperation with Foreign institutions, public or private entities participating in first person at birth, growth, and protection of the monument to its life over time. This will allow the creation of a network of people whose destinies got connected because of the roadmap of pain in the camp, people who come in Falstad from all around Europe to visit the site (veterans’ relatives, friends, tourists, passers- by, etc.).

People can approach this intervention in a superficial way, but this could also be a hint for some of the people visiting to dig more into the history of the place. We don’t want to build an emotional landscape but bring out memories through a relational approach.

It’s like to give life to those memories through sharing. The artistic intervention is transformed into a shared process, a new space that produces relationships among all those who do take part. People can recognize their own identities in those plants and flowers; they can feel a deep bond between memory and gratitude and take responsibility of keeping the memory’s surviving (through sending the seeds) outside of an institutional frame.

It is clear how far we are from the monument’s public function, as “in the public interest”. Shared Roots would reactivate the traditional functions of the monument in new ways, so that alternative visions and narratives are simply possible, other than institutional ones. The artistic practice transforms the place of memory in an area of social dialogue, through a shared and productive process of relationships, in which ourselves, the authorities (or institutions) and the public (or the community) could be a part of.

Please see, as follows a list of possible institutions that, according to some of the nationalities of the prisoners in the camp, we be-

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lieve could be interested in joining the network of relationships: POLAND_Regoznica Gross-Rosen Museum (www.en.gross-rosen.eu) The Gross-Rosen concentration camp was originally established in 1940 as a subcamp of the Sachsenhausen concentration camp.

The camp was named for the nearby village of Gross-Rosen. Now called Rogoznica, the village is approximately 40 miles southwest of Wroclaw in present-day western Poland. In 1941, Gross-Rosen was designated an autonomous concentration camp.

DENMARK_Ryvangen Mindelunden i Ryvangen (www.mindelundenryvangen.dk) Mindelunden (The Memorial Grove) is a memorial park in Ryvangen in Copenhagen, Denmark. During the Second World War, the German occupying power executed members of the Danish resistance movement on this location. After the liberation the site was converted to a cemetery and a memorial park for the resistance members who were executed there.

screen-printed COR-TEN steel plate_detail

FRANCE_Lyon The Centre d’histoire de la résistance et de la déportation (www. chrd.lyon.fr) The Centre d’histoire is a museum in Lyon, located on the former site of a French military health school (École de Santé Militaire).

The school was occupied by the Germans in the spring of 1943, and used by Lyon’s Gestapo to torture resistance members.

FINLAND_Helsinki Military Museum of Finland (Sotamuseo) (www.sotamuseo.fi) The Military Museum of Finland (Sotamuseo) displays military paraphernalia since the beginning of the fifteenth century to present. The museum is part of the Finnish National Defence University.

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HOLLAND_Wilnis Herzogenbusch concentration camp (www.nmkampvught.nl) Herzogenbusch was a Nazi concentration camp located in Vught.

It was, with Natzweiler-Struthof in occupied France, the only concentration camp run directly by the SS in western Europe outside of Germany. After the war the camp was used as a prison for Germans and Dutch collaborators. Today there is a visitors’ center with exhibitions and a national monument remembering the camp and its victims.

TURKEY_Istanbul The Quincentennial Foundation - 500. Yil Vakfi (www.muze500. com) This is the foundation that supports the Jewish Museum of Turkey where it is documented, inter alia, the period of the II World War and the stories of the Jewish Turks who housed during Nazism people from other European countries.

SWEDEN_Stockholm Eldred World War II Museum (www.eldredwwiimuseum.org) The Eldred WWII Museum intends to fulfill its mission pledge by giving people of all ages the opportunity to learn about the history of WWII and by presenting unique exhibits about the WWII era.

Ex - Jugoslavia: CROATIA_Jasenovac Jasenovac Research Institute (www.jasenovac.org) The Jasenovac Research Institute is a non-profit human rights organization and a research institute, committed to establishing the truth about the Holocaust in Yugoslavia and dedicated to the search for justice for its victims. The JRI promotes research and activities designed to enlighten the world to the crimes of genocide committed at Jasenovac and wartime Yugoslavia against Serbs, Jews and Romas and provides assistance

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to all groups and individuals who likewise seek justice for these victims.

SERBIA_Belgrade Staro Sajmište (www.starosajmiste.info/en/) Staro Sajmište is an urban neighborhood of Belgrade and it was the site of the Sajmište concentration camp (1941–1944). After the war the settlement was totally neglected for years and gradually started falling apart. Former fair buildings were awarded to some prominent artists (painters and sculptors) as their ateliers.

Finally on July 9, 1987, Belgrade City Assembly decided to make Staro Sajmište a cultural site, thereby protecting it from real-estate expansion development. However, almost nothing was done to conserve the area and today Staro Sajmište is in a very bad shape.

The project ‘A Visit to Staro Sajmište’ is supported by Fond B92 and Rosa Luxemburg Foundation.

Ex - CZECHOLSOVAKIA_Lidice Lidice Memorial (www.lidice-memorial.cz/default_en.aspx) The intent of Lidice Memorial is to take care of permanent preservation of the remembrance of the town of Lidice and the suffering of its residents, who in 1942 became victims of Nazi violence, and to keep the name of the Lidice Village as the world’s symbol of all the victims of war crimes.

HUNGARY_Budapest The Public Foundation for the Research of Central and East European History and Society - House of Terror Museum (www.terrorhaza.hu/en/) Having survived two terror regimes, it was felt that the time had come for Hungary to erect a fitting memorial to the victims, and at the same time to present a picture of what life was like for Hungarians in those times. In December 2000 ‘The Public Foundation for the Research of Central and East European History and Society’ purchased the building with the aim of establishing a museum

in order to present these two bloody periods of Hungarian history.

GERMANY_Weimar Buchenwald and Mittelbau-Dora Memorials Foundation (www.buchenwald.de) The foundation’s purpose is to preserve the sites of the crimes as sites of mourning and commemoration, to provide these sites with a scientifically founded form and outward appearance and to make them accessible to the public in an appropriate manner, as well as to promote education through the research of the respective historical occurrences and their conveyance to the public.

BELGIUM_Willebroek Breendonk Memorial (www.breendonk.be/index.html) During the Second World War, the fort Breendock was used by the Germans as a prison camp for detaining Belgian political dissidents, captured resistance members and Jews. Many were tortured or executed within the camp. Today, the site is a national memorial and can be visited.

FAROE ISLANDS_Vagur Vágs Bygdasavn, Vágur and World War II (www.vagsbygdasavn. com) This is a small museum with a collection of ship models of the nine ships from Vágur, which went missing during World War II. Some of them were bombed by German submarines, others had accidents and some of ships nobody knows what happened.

Ex - URSS: LATVIA_Riga Occupation Museum Association of Latvia (www.hokupacijasmuzejs.lv) The Museum of the Occupation plays an essential role in restoring

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and reinforcing historical awareness and consciousness in Latvia.

During the occupation period (1940–1991) history was the handmaiden of alien totalitarian ideologies and regimes. Their censorship had removed or grossly distorted historical events that the ruling regimes wanted to erase from human memory, such as the Hitler–Stalin pacts, the Holocaust, mass deportations, repressions and many others.

BELARUS_Minsk Memorial to the Tragedy of Dalva (www.dalva.narod.ru) A memorial set up in 1973 commemorates the murder of the residents of the village Dalva close to Minsk. German troops locked the village residents in a house in June 1944 and burned down the entire village. The memorial was constructed on the initiative of a survivor of the tragedy.

LIETUVA (Kaunas) Kauno IX Forto Muziejus (www.9fortomuziejus.lt/istorija/ixfortas/) The Ninth Fort is a stronghold in the northern part of Kaunas, Lithuania. It is a part of the Kaunas Fortress, which was constructed in the late 19th century. During the occupation of Kaunas and the rest of Lithuania by the Sovoet Union, the fort was used as a prison and way-station for prisoners being transported to labour camps. After the occupation of Lithuania by Nazy Germany, the fort was used as a place of execution for Jews, captured Soviets, and others.

The Chalk Circle

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About us “The past is a property-owner’s luxury” ( Jean-Paul Sartre, Nausea)

We thought of a chalk circle as an act of drawing a ritual and fragile contextualization. As something that brings together, or maintains together, things that are distinct, as with a set, in mathematics, indicating that those entities could also be regarded, under certain conditions, as a unit. Because some peculiarities are shared among the members, so with the same attitude we intend to create specific contexts for discussion.

If the monument has to testify the need to build a collective memory (as something which is nearly impossible to talk about but, surely, not forgettable), on the other hand it freezes in time - and space - the unacceptable and traumatic in the events of the past. In this sense, memory has to do with the construction of the memory itself, as a process of construction of forgetfulness, a sort of amnesia of those parts of the past that for some reasons would be a rift in the dominant narrative of the story. The artistic approach in this regard in recent years is working on re-displaying in new ways based on relationships, in order to bring different narratives and visions, from those in institutional arrangements and in those “authorized” to speak. The artistic intervention is transformed into a shared process, a new space that produces relationships among all players who take part: the artist, the authorities (or institutions) and the public (or the community). So the idea of asserting a “truth”, it is replaced by a research process that opens a view on the past where there are some areas of contact, some points of encounter and confrontation.

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The chalkers are: Micol Rispoli Micol was born in Ischia where she currently lives. She graduates in Architecture at the University Federico II of Naples. In February, she earns a Master’s degree in Museum Curator. She have taken part in numerous seminars and workshops, including, finally, that of the PIDA 2012, working with the Austrian architects feld72 on sustainable and low budget reuse of an abandoned village on the island of Ischia (Na). In addition to the design experience during and after her university studies, matures a strong interest in contemporary art and art-architecture relationship, with particular attention to urban and social context. She also is an amateur photographer and a member of the Circolo Culturale di Ischia Georges Sadoul - Italian Institute for Philosophical Studies.

Emanuela Murro She studied in L’Aquila Foreign Languages and Literatures. After her studies, she have been working abroad particularly in Event’s organization. She has been studying for some time, together with the Archaeologist Giovanni Murro, history of the Second World War, with particular attention to the Polish II Corps (known as the Anders Army) from the formative period upon the arrival in Italy, and resistance movements in Italy and Europe. In the meantime, she grows an interest in Photography and in the anthropological aspects of Contemporary Theatre. Through the Master Course in Events and Museum Curator at IED in Rome, she focuses her research also on Contemporary Art, particularly on the representative and performative aspects and its documentation.

Daniela Iannella Daniela earns a degree in Scenic Design at the Academy of Fine Arts in Bologna. During the course of her study, she experiences both as Assistant Scenic Designer and as Costume Designer, within some videos making. She later went on to pursue her interest in Contemporary Art (especially in experimental music and

theater) through the Master Course in Events and Museum Curator at IED in Rome, focusing her research on the new possibilities of expression that contemporary art offers to relate with the public, and investigating especially the innovative display and performative methods that result, both from the point of view of organization than of setting.

Lúa Coderch She lives and works in Barcelona. Formed as a sculptor, nowadays her practice involves all kinds of formats and contexts, including lectures, installation, sound works and performances. Her work points at how things (such as ideas, images, regimes) get to have their shape, at how they are constructed, in a process of formalization of the real. Her main area of interest go from history to economics, from politics to biography. As a practitioner, she’s interested in exploring ways of putting into practice this effect of impoverishment, deflation, separation or deactivation, an effect that occurs in many different ways, not only by accident or chance, and without necessarily provoking laughter. The aim is to act as an extremely attentive expectator, mainly provoking strategic shifts in perception through display, displacement and re-contextualization of preexistent images and objects.

Giovanni Murro Born in 1980, currently lives and works in Rome. He earns a degree in Archeology at University La Sapienza in Rome and a PhD in Classical Archaeology at University of Salento in Lecce. He has been studying for some time now, together with the independent curator Emanuela Murro, the history of World War II and the resistance movements in Italy and Europe. He focuses particularly on in the history of the Polish II Corps (known as the Anders Army), from the formative period upon the arrival in Italy.

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Bibliography W. Benjamin, Über den Begriff der Geschicht, in Walter Benjamin gesammelte Schriften, vol. I-2, Suhrkamp, Frankfurt, 1950.

W. Benjamin, Das Passagen-Werk, hrsg. von Rolf Tiedemann, 2 Bände, Suhrkamp, Frankfurt am Main, 1983.

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REcall docs - Shared Roots book

Published by Politecnico di Milano, DAStU

Š The Authors: Creative Commons: license CC BY SA 3.0

shared roots book REcall is a research project founded by EC Culture 2007-13 Programme focused on the possible roles Museography can play when dealing with Difficult Heritage such as the ones coming from conflicts and wars. REcall wishes to envision new ways to the handling of Painful Places & Stories going behind any traditional approach: there is the need to shift from the ‘simply’ commemoration attitude to a more active involvement and participation of people in/with Places & Stories, through design strategies of ‘reappropriation’ (www.recall-project.polimi.it).

edited by The Chalk Circle: Micol Rispoli, Emanuela Murro, Daniela Iannella, Lúa Coderch, Giovanni Murro

REcall is a research project funded by EC Cluture 2007-13 Programme (n. 2012 - 0927 / 001 - 001 CU7 COOP7)

REcall