In these and many other cases, the victims and survivors are
used as a political currency. Only rarely do they have a say in
the handling of the public memorialisation. As the time goes
by the victims and survivors perceive memorialisation as a
perpetuation of past conflict and lived trauma. The meanings
of their personal tragedies and suffering are appropriated by
the collective.
The untold story is that, more often than not, top-down
memorialisation fails to meet the expectations of survivors in
the aftermath of violence. With their grievances unattended,
In Western societies,
grassroots memo-
rialisation has now
become a socially
accepted practice of
mourning in a public
space.
survivors are often creating alternative memorial spaces that
will address their needs. The Monument Quilt, for instance,
is one such example. It is a crowd-sourced collection of
thousands of stories from survivors of rape and abuse. Using
quilts to symbolically stitch their stories together, the victims
are creating and using public space to heal after sexual
violence. Yet, even when memorialisation is successful – that
is accepted, endorsed and practiced by the survivors, it still
represents only one segment of a much broader process of
addressing their needs (health and care, support, poverty,
reparations).
Memorial at the Maelbeek metro station in
Brussels | Ana Milošević
58
Observing Memories
ISSUE 2