Re-placing Landscapes Remembered: Yael Bartana and the Redemption of Germania
Topics: Cultural Geography
, Historical Geography
, Landscape
Keywords: war and destruction, contemporary art, memory landscapes, cultural heritage
Session Type: Virtual Paper Abstract
Day: Monday
Session Start / End Time: 2/28/2022 03:40 PM (Eastern Time (US & Canada)) - 2/28/2022 05:00 PM (Eastern Time (US & Canada))
Room: Virtual 51
Authors:
Adam Lundberg, Uppsala University, Sweden
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Abstract
This paper discusses the concept of re-placing past landscapes which I define as the spatial reification of landscapes displaced, distant or destroyed, utilizing memories, material, and symbols connected to these landscapes. The total number of migrants worldwide is at an all-time high, estimated around 272 million. As such, there will increasingly be memories of somewhere located elsewhere, meaning the memories amassed in a landscape can no longer be equated to a homogenous ‘local’ or ‘national’ collective memory, but instead as part of a global network of displaced memories, as diverse as the population in place. Concurrently, calls for physical representations of memory have been increasing over recent decades, and a continuous questioning regarding who or what deserves to be commemorated, and in what place, part of an ongoing “memorial mania”. In contrast to the more traditional form of commemoration, where an individual or event with a more or less ‘obvious’ belonging in place is recognized in the landscape, another phenomenon is taking place, where what is remembered is the past landscape in itself; a space (not a face) of the past, where the so called “obsession” with memory intersects with new artistic approaches to politics, history and geography.
Based on the work of Yael Bartana, this paper investigates contemporary art which critically re-enact and anchor the past in place, by using authentic or symbolical materiality, employing mnemonic and geographical aesthetics, investigating the relationship between key concepts such as ‘homeland’, ‘return’ and ‘belonging’; and the collective consciousness of nation states.
Re-placing Landscapes Remembered: Yael Bartana and the Redemption of Germania
Category
Virtual Paper Abstract
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