‘Sense of Trace’
In the article “Memory in the New Berlin” I thought the author clearly explored the subtle concerns of creating a new places of memory. I will focus my response on this article as it triggered a lot of ideas for me. How can new sites assume mnemonic triggers that transmit history in a way that correlates to the event? How can architecture perform?
Till writes about her tour of the uncompleted construction of Daniel Libeskind’s design for the Jewish Museum in Berlin: “Through the experience of being in a place yet to be finished, the time of this transitional period (of “Berlin-being-built”) was located in our bodily and sensory memories of this building” (222, Till).
I thought that incompletion could be a way of holding the space for the missing (narrative/ presence), a perpetual unknown that provokes wonder. There is something satisfying about completion in the way that it facilitates a perspective that continues to distant the present from the event. In this way there is potential for a closing, “they commodity the fears and fantasies of national haunting by imposing order on time (often to discipline ghosts) and package a palatable and profitable identity through place” (196, Till).
In the example of the Jewish Museum I realized that the importance for architecture to maintain a life that extends intergenerationally that the presence of bodies moving in the space should be accounted for. Moving in the space of incompletion brings to the site a continual emotional reaction, a vitality.
Till also refers to the places that bear witness. Given architectures potential temporal endurance, she writes, “Places will remain to bear witness after human survivors have passed away.” (212, Till). I think this impermanence is a beautiful thing to remember while passing through either a historical site or a piece of architecture that is intended to evoke a history. The wandering presence of the tourist is the material instability of the site, perceiving and contributing to the ‘sense of trace.’
Sevcenko addressed the presence of the tourist in relation to the vision of the International Coalition of Historic Site Museums of Conscience: “We hope that historic sites interpreting a single moment or event will be continually renewed by citizens challenging the latest legacy of what happened there as it takes new form in their societies.” (63, Sevcenko).
Reading these articles it is clear that it is important to recognize the methods of exhibition transmit/reflect not only the subject or event in concern, but the intended trajectory or the emotional propulsion departing from the event of the trauma.