The Katastwóf Karavan , by Kara Walker ( 2017 ) I Alex Marks and Kara Walker
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projects in different parts of the globe . Scholars of memory have worked to move beyond the nationcentered beginning of the field in the work of Pierre Nora and others , and to reconceive memory as transnational and transcultural , building on the assumptions that memory moves in and across various networks of exchange and that nations are neither static nor clearly circumscribed but in constant active contact with one another . In contrast , recently opened public memory institutions and recent commemorations have become more and more monumental , supporting nationalist and ethnocentric imaginaries . I ’ m thinking here of recent memorials and memory museums like the Memorial to the Victims of German Occupation in Budapest , for example , or the September 11 Memorial Museum in New York , as well as monumental nationalistic commemorations of the First World War , D- Day , the 1967 War , the Easter Rising in Ireland and so many others .
I ’ ve written about mobile memory and stateless memory in an effort , precisely , to contest these renewed ethnocentric , monumental and masculinist memory practices and institutions , and to recover some of the critical potential of the field which , in its earlier formations , was inspired by the idea of
“ counter-memory ” and by counter-memorials – in the work of memorial artists like Maya Lin , Horst Hoheisel or Renate Stih and Frieder Schnock , for example .
In dialogue with work on transnational , transcultural , cosmopolitan , multidirectional , diasporic conceptions of memory , I have explored memory ’ s mobility and thought about how it can be aesthetically , and , indeed , museologically figured . Through what media , what forms of presence and action , what aesthetic strategies , circuits and itineraries can memories be transmitted beyond the confines of national frames , challenging rather than reinscribing singular histories and nationalist imaginaries ? How can they do so while still doing justice to their rootedness in the local and the historically particular ? What specific theories of memory might best be attuned to memory ’ s politics , seeking out and identifying counternationalist and counter-identitarian strategies ? I have focused on memory ’ s mobility by highlighting memory projects and artistic works that are small and anti-monumental and that cross borders . I ’ ve been especially inspired by the wonderful work of women artists like Mirta Kupferminc , Silvina der Merguerditchian , Doris Salcedo , Yin Xiuzhen ,
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Observing Memories ISSUE 4