Social memory: places and rites of remembering February 10, 2009

Social memory: places and rites of rememberingFebruary 10, 2009

The Swords of Qādisīyah, also called the Hands of Victory, Baghdad (1989)

Monument as site-specific art: Mount Rushmore National MemorialKeystone, South Dakota (1927-1941)

Originally known to the Lakota Sioux as Six Grandfathers, this Native American sacred mountain was renamed after Charles E. Rushmore, a prominent New York lawyer, during an expedition in 1885. The site was seized from the Lakota tribe after the Great Sioux War of 1876-77.

Nation state and its monuments Ataturk’s mausoleum in Ankara- Anitkabir (1953)

Modernizing Ankara: Ataturk Boulevard in early 20th c.

Ground zero: WTC Site, New York 2001 Ground zero: Hiroshima 1945

“The term Ground Zero may be used to describe the point on the earth's surface where an explosion occurs.” (Wikipedia)

Aerial view of theWorld Trade Center site, 2001.

New Orleans: An aerial view showing floodwaters around the entire downtown area after Hurricane Katrina (2005).

the interviewing of individuals about theirpersonal experiences of past events for the purpose of recollecting alternative narratives, which are not necessarilybound by official histories, and which are essentiallysilenced by those official histories.

storytelling performance collective memory narrativity

What is oral history?

... that there were people who realised that the struggle of citizens against state power is the struggle of their memory against forced forgetting, and who made it their aimfrom the beginning not only to save themselves but to survive aswitnesses to later generations, to become relentless recorders...

Connerton 15

Population exchangebetween Greece and Turkey1919-1922

1,400.000 uprooted

State violenceand memory

Maurice Halbwachs(11 March 1877 - 16 March 1945) a French philosopher and sociologist

Diaspora narratives: Armenians of Providence

North Burial Ground, Providence

Palu on the Euphrates, Eastern Turkey

Old Palu: homeland of Providence Armenians

Armenian familyfrom Palu, Karakoçan/Depe/Tepeh Bedros and Mariam Bedrosian

Manuk Vartanian’s wife

Elizabeth Krekorian, from Palu

Surp Boghos Vank Church, Old Palu, Pesi (Nubshi) Village

Armenian Monastery in Akdamar Island in Lake Van, Eastern TurkeyCathedral Church of the Holy Cross (915-921 AD)

Sites of memory

Memory is not stored: it is performed

collective action that re-animates history by re-iteration,social performance

Collective memory, social performance and architectural space

Paul Connerton:

commemorative ceremoniesritual performances

Pierre Nora:

inscription of memoryin the material world,architectural surfacessites, places, landscapes of memory

Bernard Tschumi:

Event-places

Woodstock