avArc
Affective Archive of Memory and Temporalities
The project Affective Archive of Memory and Temporalities is concerned with the transformation of memory and of sites of memory, and with mapping and archiving them. What set our thinking and the plans for the project in motion was the treatment of sites of Nazi crimes that stand beside the concentration camps established in the canon of knowledge, and where often little or nothing still recalls what happened. At these places there is usually no transmission of knowledge at all, and where there is, it comes from local initiatives, activists and/or the relatives of the victims. Yet almost everywhere one could mark on a map there is a place of history and of stories that should not be forgotten. From these considerations and from our artistic and theoretical practice, we want, as artistic research at the intersection of a local relation and digitality, to address the history of places and sites of memory that disappear, are invisible, or are prevented.
The aim
is to find strategies by which these places inscribe themselves into our archive of collective knowledge and keep that archive up to date. Sites of memory that are already documented, and those that were hidden or have since become hidden, are marked in a commons-based virtual open-source atlas (as an alternative to Google Earth). They visualize a new cartography of memory for the present and the future, in which stories of the world that stand against the existing canon of knowledge are told and grow in constant movement. People who are at a particular place should, through the project, reach the history of that place, by a transmission of knowledge that happens in situ and by easy access, for example through QR codes.
In this context one can understand such codes as the smallest possible and yet unmistakably coded references to sites of memory, behind which a chain of virtually assembled knowledge opens. Because the archive that takes shape in the course of the project is conceived as a long-term archive, and because updating it is never finished, it is indispensable to form a collective that works on the project together and stays closely connected with initiatives, activists and communities whose knowledge of particular places and stories already exists, worked through in publications, actions and interventions. Another decisive part of the undertaking is artistic interventions of every kind, present locally or virtually and prepared digitally. Artistic research can also act as an affective kind of knowledge transmission and create sites of memory where this is no longer physically possible, is prevented, or is not wanted. Sites of memory are to be visualized with augmented reality and made accessible especially for young people and young adults. That again requires a collective network which brings together the abilities, resources and so on of the people working in this project. With AR, places are to be marked and shown as they were in the past, and thus brought into the present on a device (for example forced-labour camps on sites where now only meadow and forest can be seen, with no indication of what happened). This form of knowledge transmission sits at the intersection of digitization, new media, research and art.
Further information in our article:
avArc. A Landscape of Memory and Temporalities published in: Victoria Kumar / Gerald Lamprecht / Lukas Nievoll / Grit Oelschlegel / Sebastian Stoff (eds.), Erinnerungskultur und Holocaust Education im digitalen Wandel. Georeferenzierte Dokumentations-, Erinnerungs- und Vermittlungsprojekte
digital memory_artikel__avarc_julia stolba_stefan wahler Download
aGis
aGis is an information system for places of history. It records monuments, memorial plaques, graves, camps, historic sites and buildings that have disappeared. For each place it records how the place changed over time, which people are connected with it, which sources document it and what it looks like on the ground today.
Memorial sites, archives, museums and associations keep their collections in aGis separately and still work on shared holdings. An editorial team reviews everything before it becomes public. aGis works in six languages.
This page was translated from German with the help of AI and has not yet been reviewed.