EDITORIAL
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La Model prison of Barcelona . Inside views of the 4th gallery , where a memory center is supposed to be built I EUROM
First of all , it goes without saying that we dedicate this issue to everyone who has in any way
suffered from this wretched , unforeseen and entirely unjust pandemic , either in first person or through their loved ones . I say unjust , first because of the healthcare crisis itself and then because of its terrible knock-on effects . But I also say unjust because the people who are most vulnerable to the pandemic are our older family members , who have already suffered and lived through a few or even many of the conflicts that we as students of the past have addressed a thousand times . Some of them have survived more than three wars and two dictatorships and now are gone with the wind , not knowing when or how or where . This issue is dedicated to all of them for the struggles that they have fought in the past to leave us a better world , and to everyone else who has taken up their legacy and fights on for a universal justice that remains so necessary .
After the first month of lockdown and my attempts to grasp the reality of what was happening in our world , I conducted some online classes as I do every year on memory and public space , history , contemporary art and new forms of transmission . At the time , I was lost and bewildered , not to mention sad and disoriented , much as I imagine most of the citizens on our planet were . We still are . The only idea that came to mind was to propose a straightforward creative activity on the concept of “ contemporary confinements ”, so that my young students would produce a digital creation based on examples that related the past to the present in a specific space , such as the one we had been using to address memory and memorial heritage : Barcelona ’ s vast penitentiary known as La Model .
Our resources of time and space and our working conditions were far from ideal . However , my delight was enormous when I found that the transmission of a concept or space from our recent past into the reality of our present became a tool of infinite memory with boundless potential . This might
Cover IMAGE
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