Abstract

Van der Laarse proposed the concept of a ‘terrorscape’ to examine the spatialisation of memories of war in contemporary Europe, exploring ‘narrative’, and the way memory is ‘told’ through space. That ‘spaces with traces’ are simultaneously relics of past time and contemporarily valuable is supported by Nora’s interpretation of mnemonic sites, lying always entre histoire et memoire. Importantly, it is the constructivist approach of a heritage site – a terrorscape, or traumascape – that allows us to understand the materiality of memory and interpretations of its evolving meaning.

As a transnational, and transdisciplinary, study, I consider three sites associated with the violent regime of National Socialism: Dachau Memorial, Mauthausen Memorial, and the Anne Frank House, all of which claim an ‘authenticity’ in their historic experience but have variously ‘recreated it’ in their curatorial, material and digital realms. Since the 1990s, there has been a concerted effort to ‘make visible’ (Sichtbarmachungen) the tensions between presence and absence in the construction of historical meaning within memorial spaces. However, incorporating notions of performance central to memory studies, as well as participation in relation to heritage and tourism, I am interested in how visitors – in their millions – have appreciated, or disputed – the materiality they are faced with. As a result, in addition to the material monuments of the sites, the dialogue between the guardians and visitors between 1990 and 2024 – whether in travel websites, social media ‘posts’, on-site visitor books, school projects, or choreographed workshops – forms the material of this paper. Beyond these strategies – which Violi understands as the memorial-museum’s efforts to transform the visitor ‘from someone who sees and learns, to somebody who feels and experiences’ – and the mediatised, anti-mimetic methods of the museum, I am interested in how visitors record and engage in space, affected by and in their encounter with its material dimension.

Join this talk on Teams at this link: https://teams.microsoft.com/meet/3776394547071?p=FBa3xt5GtYdQpvfRZP