Bodily collisions: Toward a new materialist account of memorial art

Abstract

The major objective of this article is to elaborate on the new materialist philosophical framework as a useful analytical perspective for approaching contemporary artistic memorials. The Memorial to the Murdered Jews of Europe (designed by Eisenman, 2005) and The Garden of Exile (designed by Libeskind, 2001), both situated in Berlin, serve as illustrative examples for theoretical investigations developed in this contribution. Relying on Deleuze and Guattari’s definition of art, the article argues that these sites heighten our awareness of materials, compositional structures, or the process of encountering the work. By weaving together the representable (narrative/symbolic/semiotic) and the unrepresentable (traumatic/bodily/material), the sites deny a purely representational logic, producing instead intensive singular events that are never fixed or unwavering. The memorial character of these sites is therefore always emergent and contingent on the complex dynamic material-semiotic assemblages of different bodies. As such, it only exists in the encounter. Relation is its onto-epistemology.

Entangled Memories: Complicating the Memory of Area Bombing Through the Haunted Ruins of Anhalter Bahnhof

“…The approach draws specifically on literature that applies new materialist approaches to engage the sensorial nature of memory site-encounters of a researcher-visitor (Allen & Brown, 2011; Dittmer & Waterton, 2019; Golańska, 2020; Micieli-Voutsinas & Cavicchi, 2019; Sumartojo, 2019; Waterton, 2014). For example, Dittmer and Waterton (2019) draw the bodily encounter of heritage to the fore in their analysis of the HMS Belfast, and Allen and Brown (2011) argue that it is “the body that makes the space for meaning-making and reflection possible through its capacity to affectively connect with other elements” (p. 314).…”

“…This article therefore follows Golańska’s (2020) self-described “primarily theoretical” development of a “collision approach” (p. 76) to public memorial art and applies it to material traces of the past. This approach draws in no small part on Golańska’s (2016, 2017, 2020) application of new materialist ontology to memory.…”

“…This article therefore follows Golańska’s (2020) self-described “primarily theoretical” development of a “collision approach” (p. 76) to public memorial art and applies it to material traces of the past. This approach draws in no small part on Golańska’s (2016, 2017, 2020) application of new materialist ontology to memory. Golanska’s (2020) approach posits the encounter with memorial art is made up of the entanglement of “two forms of memory—one grounded in recognisable narratives and structures and one situated beyond the representational realm” (p. 75).…”

“…This approach draws in no small part on Golańska’s (2016, 2017, 2020) application of new materialist ontology to memory. Golanska’s (2020) approach posits the encounter with memorial art is made up of the entanglement of “two forms of memory—one grounded in recognisable narratives and structures and one situated beyond the representational realm” (p. 75). Golanska posits that the memorial character of memorial art “only exists in the encounter” (p. 74).…”

“…As well as the foundational feminist theory contributions of Haraway (1988, 2016) and Barad (2007, 2014) to new materialist philosophy, this article more specifically engages with the emerging new materialist perspectives of memory studies (Dittmer & Waterton, 2019; Golańska, 2020; Waterton, 2014). Rather than moving “beyond” representational conventions and solely embracing the “more than human,” as many intersections of heritage and new materialism do, this article draws on Golańska’s (2020) “collision approach” to see an encounter with Anhalter as inclusive of both representational and material elements of Anhalter. Like Golanksa, this article offers an approach that draws on Barad’s idea of the material-discursive, bringing together and overlapping the normative and typically representational readings of the cultural memory the Second World War with the material, more-than-representational encounter of the site.…”