07 Memorializing Encampment. Mediating camp memories through museums, exhibitions, monuments and cemeteries

Leitung: Jochen Lingelbach

Camps are by definition characterized by exceptionality and ‘indeterminate temporariness’ (Turner 2016). Governments or humanitarian organizations establish camps as exceptional measures with no intention of keeping them permanently. Even when some camps exist for decades and urbanize into ‘city-camps’ (Agier 2002), the ‘possibility of closure is a constitutive element of the camp’ (Weima & Minca 2021). After the closure of camps, some of the histories were forgotten when the personal memories moved with the camp inhabitants elsewhere. The campsites fell into ruin, were dismantled, overgrown, or buildings were repurposed for other tasks. However, at some sites, former inmates or neighbours began to commemorate the history of those interned, imprisoned or sheltered through monuments, commemorative plaques or exhibitions. Sometimes, the camp dwellers erected these signs of memorialization already during their stay or when leaving. At other times it took years or decades until people began to excavate and commemorate the camps’ existence and their often tragic histories. Often, the focal points of commemoration were the dead who transformed these temporary places into final destinations. Their human remains, tombstones and graveyards are witnesses of the existence of concentration, internment or refugee camps around which the memorialization takes place. By bringing practitioners and scholars from various former campsites into dialogue, we want to map out how camp histories are remembered differently in varying contexts. We want to underline the agency of the former camp inhabitants in defining what is remembered and the constraints they encountered. Most camp histories are closely connected to conflict and suffering, making their memorialization contested politically. The often transnational nature of camps put these sites into tension with diverging national histories. We will debate how memory initiatives can be understood through the lens of medialities, viewing the material objects and sites as media in writing history. We want to interrogate how virtual and material objects and place-making mediates camp histories. What are the histories they become embedded in? What do they tell us about the former camps and the temporality of camps in general? What should we learn from these memorials? What is remembered and which past becomes ‘silenced’ (Trouillot 1995)? How do memorials mediate, contest and/or (re-)define collective memories?

abstracts of contributions