OVERVIEW
Memory-Works :
On Memory , Ethics & Architecture
Julian Bonder Architect Julian Bonder + Associates & Wodiczko + Bonder , Cambridge , Massachusetts Professor of Architecture , Roger Williams University , Bristol , Rhode Island
“ The Act of Remembering is of the Present and its reference is in the past and thus absent ”
- Andreas Huyssen 1
“ Society is the miracle of moving out of oneself ” - Emmanuel Lévinas 2
Few words have been so ubiquitous in contemporary culture as the word “ memory ”.
Since the 1980s the – perhaps obsessive – pursuit of memory has become omnipresent . Memory in its many forms has become a key marker in such diverse fields as historiography , psychoanalysis , visual and performative arts , information technology , and media studies . The culture of memory has impacted the relationships between politics , architectures , public art and public space , as well as the conception , creation and realization of various forms of expression of memory in our cities .
The construction of memorials and museums all over the globe seems significant in the sheer vastness and magnitude of their number , as well as in the significance that these sites of memory may have in , and for , affected communities . Examples of this are the creation of
1 Andreas Huyssen , “ Introduction ,” in Present Pasts : Urban Palimpsests and the Politics of Memory ( Stanford : Stanford University Press , 2003 ). 2 Emmanuel Lévinas , Difficult Freedom : Essays on Judaism , Seán Hand , trans . ( Baltimore : Johns Hopkins University Press , 1997 )
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Observing Memories ISSUE 4