Shared roots

SharedRootsBookworkshop Falstad24-30 June 2013

edited by The Chalk Circle:Micol Rispoli, Emanuela Murro, Daniela Iannella, Lúa Coderch, Giovanni Murro

REcall

Shared Roots book

Docs REcall

REcall ConsortiumPOLIMI-Politecnico di Milano - Coordinator - (Italy)AAU-Aalborg University (Denmark)NTUN-Norwegian University of Science and Technology (Norway)UNEW-Newcastle University (United Kingdom)Fasltad Museum, Falstad (Norway)Museo della Resistenza, Turin (Italy)

Associated PartnersErgan FoundationRomsdal museetRoutes AgencySnark

© The Authors: Creative Commons: license CC BY SA 3.0

The views expressed in this docu-ment are the sole responsi-bility of the authors and the European Commission cannot be held re-sponsible for any use which may be made of the information contained therein.

REcall is a research project founded by EC Culture 2007-13 Programme (n. 2012 - 0927 / 001 - 001 CU7 COOP7) focused on the possible roles Museography can play when dealing with Difficult Herit-age such as the ones coming from conflicts and wars. REcall wishes to envision new ways to the handling of Painful Places & Stories going behind any traditional approach: there is the need to shift from the ‘simply’ commemoration attitude to a more active involvement and participation of people in/with Places & Stories, through design strategies of ‘reappropriation’ (www.recall-project.polimi.it).

Shared RootsBook

edited by The Chalk Circle:Micol Rispoli, Emanuela Murro, Daniela Iannella, Lúa Coderch, Giovanni Murro

Docs REcall

Table of contents

9 REcall project

11 About

13 Shared Roots

15 History_an introduction

19 About Falstad

25 Digging

29 Spreading

45 Thriving

55 The Chalk Circle

57 About us

61 Bibliography

REcall project

About

REcall seeks to formulate a new role of the architectural environment based on invigorated research on the cultural landscapes of WWI and WWII and strengthen the attention on the management, documenta-tion and preservation of this heritage.The project regards heritage as a dynamic process, involving the declaration of our memory of past events and actions that have been refashioned for present day purposes such as identity, community, legalisation of power and authority. The project group see that any cultural landscape - i.e. architecture - is characterized by its dynamism, temporality and changing priorities in social percep-tion.We stress that the research we develop will generate the values to be protected tomorrow. On the strength of this account, our project proposes the development of sustainable and innovative architectural practices for reuse, valorisation and communication of the XXth Century European Conflict Heritage considered as Cultural Landscape.

SHARED ROOTS BOOK - 11

SharedRoots

History_an introduction

Norway maintained a policy of neutrality during World War I and the post-war years, and only saw a need to strengthen its military when tensions grew in Europe in the late 1930.

Endeavouring to remain neutral, Norway negotiated favorable trade treaties both with the United Kingdom and Germany, but both these countries had a strategic interest in denying the oth-er access to Norway. Norway was important to Germany for two primary reasons: access to British waters for possible invasion of Britain, and transportation of its wintertime shipments of iron ore from Sweden (for steel and weapons production) through Norway’s ice-free port of Narvik. German attacked by sea and air early in the morning of 9 April 1940.

Most of Norway’s plans to increase its military strength had not been completed in time. Local resistance and Allied counter-at-tacks delayed the capture of Oslo just long enough to allow the Norwegian government and royal family to escape. Norway was soon overpowered. By the end of May, Allied troops were with-drawn from Norway to fight the quickly advancing German offen-sive in France, leaving Norway to Nazi occupation.

Also like other Nazi occupied countries, a local resistance front grew.

Earlier counter-attacks and assaults shortly after the invasion were improvised and disorganised, but groups specialised and profes-sionalised in the course of the war (Milorg, Osvald Group, Com-pany Linge, etc,). Sabotage and resistance efforts provoked swift and bloody reprisals from the Nazis.

Following Hitler’s suicide and the taking of Berlin by Allied and Soviet forces in April 1945, Dwight D. Eisenhower sent a telegram


to Norway demanding the surrender of the German army there. To the relief of the nation, on 7th May the Germans made a ra-dio announcement of their capitulation. Overnight, 40.000 armed Milorg members seized back the Royal Palace, main police station and other public buildings. The German surrender took effect at midnight on 8th May. Norway’s Crown Prince Olav returned to the country on May 14th with a 21 man delegation of the exiled government, and on 7th June King Hakon VII and the rest of the royal family arrived back in Oslo.

10,262 Norwegians lost their lives during the war, around 700 of these were Jews sent to concentration camps in Germany and Po-land.

Large areas - especially in the Finnmark region - has been de-stroyed by bombing or the German ‘scorched earth’ policy. Around 50,000 Norwegians were found guilty of treason after the war. They had been members of the Norwegian national socialist party, Nas-jonal Samling, who sympathised and collaborated with the Nazis.


About Falstad

Nazi German authorities first visited Falstad in August 1941 with the hope of making it a center for the Lebensborn5 program in Norway, but found it unsuitable for this use. Originally, Falstad was a boarding school for boys since 1921, founded as part of the general movement in Europe to reform the penal system, espe-cially for children. Because the resemblance with a prison build-ing, Falstad began to serve as internment and transit camp in late summer of 1941, mostly used for political prisoners from Nazi-occupied territories (from at least 13 different countries).

The main characteristic of the camp was forced, hard, and largely meaningless labor. Degradations and abuse were commonplace, particularly under the administration of SS-Hauptscharführer Gogol and Edward F. Lambrecht. The camp commanders used the nearby forest as a site for extrajudicial executions of prisoners of war, and executions following show trial of political and Jewish prisoners. In fact the camp also became notorious for its use as a transit camp for deportation of Norvegian Jews to Auschwitz.

1 The Lebensborn Project (positive eugenics) was one of several programs started to pro-duce the crazed about preserve and/or establish a society composed solely of individuals of “pure Aryan race”. Only at the end of the second world war it was possible to find that such a program was to build secret residences where to connect human individuals “racially pure” in order to concieve. Most women, who chosen to do this, were combined with the soldiers of the Wehrmacht, Luftwaffe or Kriegsmarine officers. The project began in 1935 and was initially conceived to assist SS wives during pregnancy, but soon turned into a racial selection process. Since 1938 the direction was entrusted to the Persönlicher Stab RFSS, in practice the central personnel office of the SS. In this sense, his role was changed. The headquarters of the Lebensborn Eingetragener Verein (company registered source of life) became the meeting point between officers of the SS and German women “racially pure”. The ultimate aim was the children’s world of pure Germanic strain. After birth, children were separated from their parents and entrusted to the SS organization that took care of their education. Not all officers of the SS Lebensborn project were enlisted: membership was voluntary. At the beginning of 1940, with the occupation of Denmark and Norway in operation Weserübung, Nazi Germany had provided the lands on which start the project. Special facilities were built hospitals, geriatric wards and homes where mothers could con-tinue the pregnancy and give birth to their children in excellent living conditions.


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In total, 4.500 people, of whom 200 women, where deported from Falstad and later were sent to other camps in Germany or Poland, or to Grini, in Norway. In the period between 1942 and 1943, at least 220 internees where shot in the nearby forest. During the beginnig of May 1945, the camp authorities sought to exhume and hide the bodies of their victims, sinking about 25 in the fjord near the camp. The exact death toll of the whole camp period re-mains unknown, because the camp authorities burned as many documents as they could before the liberation in 1945. After the Second World War, 3.000 members of the Norwegian Nazi Party where imprisoned in Falstad. In 1949 the camp was closed and regained its original function as a boarding school.

Falstad Museum was established in connection with the liberation anniversary in 1995, and was arranged in the basement of the main building that was the SS-Strafgefangenenlager Falstad. The Cen-tre was established in 2000 and now it is a national training and documentation center for prisoners of war history, humanitarian law and human rights.

The pathway that leads from the Camp area to the former execu-tion site in the Falstad Forest was recently established. It is about 1.7 km long and doesn’t follow a specific historical route between the camp and the forest, but runs along the creek Byaelva and be-gins near the former waste dump of the camp.


Digging

“The trace is the presence of an absence.” ( Jacques Derrida, Of Grammatology)

The memories of the past and the official story leave their mark in the history of the landscape5 even in what is partially removed: those homeless memories that create a space where the past trans-lates through individual or collective emotions.

This could be possible through reading, observing and selecting data, signs and figures present at the place, and our effort to try re-interpret them, referring to other real and imaginary places. André Corboz3, in The land as a palimpsest, claims that the territory as the city are stratified over time listings artifacts, rich traces and from these we have to begin their transformation project. He recognizes culture as a fundamental dimension of the landscape and territory, whereby is also defined by the collective imagination of the com-munities living there, has its own semantic dimension, which is adherent to the fact.

This makes the project and the space able to engage in similar, though different inhabitant and autobiographical writings, evoca-tive and emotional processes.

In this project the trace4 is the landscape. As Renato Bocchi wrote: “I’m fascinated thinking landscape as a palimpsest of laminated signs, traces, of memories, of scripture, and believe the project like overwriting on the schedule: an interpretative overwrite, but in

2 We define landscape (both natural or urban) a territory, as perceived by people, whose character is derived from the interactions of natural and anthropic factors.3 Cfr. A. Corboz, Le territoire comme palimpseste et autres essays, Besançon, Editions de l’Imprimeur, 2001.4 We call traces individual fragments that, assembled, attempt to construct and deconstruct an imaginary, both individual or collective.


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turn has its own internal logic, capable of giving relational read-ing of things and spaces between things that can reveal schedule”5. The idea of a beloved one dying in a remote place, ties you to the place. This could also be thought as a bond: someone is taking care of you, looking for you, recognizing you as a presence.

The theme of absence that becomes presence features many works of contemporary artists. As in Doris Salcedo’s installation Plegaria Muda (2008-2010), consisting of about 162 units, each unit being formed by a pair of wooden tables lying one upturned on top of the other; the surfaces of these are separated by a thick layer of Colombian earth. The soil is traversed by an irrigation system that sustains a sparse smattering of vegetable life, which bursts through the top of each inverted table. On first view, the visitor is chal-lenged by the almost perfect alignment of morphologically iden-tical structures, which resemble a gigantic archive. However, on approaching the piece, this impression is disturbed by an eruption of organic detail. Between 2003 and 2009, about 1,500 marginal-ized civilians were recruited by the Colombian army, presumably for work, but were instead removed to remote locations, murdered, and buried in mass graves without any kind of identification; their bodies were subsequently presented as guerrilla fighter causalities. By digging out the dead, and, in doing so, also revolving the view-ers, installing them as participants in a silent mourning for the victims of extra-judicial killings. In fact, the installation transports the viewer into a dialectical atmosphere, which captures much of what Walter Benjamin meant with his concept of “dialectical im-age” - an image produced by the conflict between two juxtaposed experiences from different times, carrying contradictory and ir-reconcilable meanings and narratives. This dialectical tension, between the stable image of an archived event and the unstable experience of its re-installation, is, therefore, essential, ensuring the work transcends the simple terrain of aesthetic efficiency (as a museum object) and installing, the possibility of a real trial, im-peaching the archive’s and history’s tendency to pacify, erase, and hide the wounds.

5 Renato Bocchi, Narrative structures and landscape project. Tracks for a story, in Sara Marini, Cristina Barbiani (a cura di), The broadcast landscape and design culture, Quodlibet, Mac-erata, 2010.


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Spreading

Visiting Falstad has made a deep impression on us, both the woods and the fjord still hold grim secrets. Both a memorial and human rights centre, Falstad is joining the threads of the past and future. Through education, documentation and research on the history of prisoners of war, humanitarian law and human rights, the centre aims to foster a critical, analytical, forward-looking approach and help to build a future where solidarity, human dignity and com-passion strengthen their position as fundamental values, both in Norway and in the whole world.

Falstad is a place for remembering, learning and moving forward wiser, more committed, better equipped. The only thing we can meaningfully say after experiencing Falstad is this: we will not for-get.

The landscape is an expression of civilization and culture by trans-lating into recognizable values at a given community and a defi-nite historical period. Thanks to its ability to reveal the complex relationship between nature and history, the landscape becomes a place of memory and interpretation of the story through nature. The traces and signs of a territory shall enter into a dialogue with this integration, creating an emotional relationship between indi-vidual perceptions and history. Within the landscape, the simulta-neous presence of present and past sends the collective memory of the territory, and transforms the garden into a cultural container where the landscape takes on the character of the life and soul of lived spaces. The landscape is in fact really grasped when it exceeds the objective discovering secret order representation through a complete dissolution of the ego. The memory of a landscape is an affective state of the human soul through which certain knowledge (perceptions) come to light through the stimulation of creativity and memory. Falstad is a complex ecosystem, with many things


happening in those very same spaces (different layers). We were trying to, as newcomers, experience the place in its complexity. The first thing that we felt when we arrived there was the overwhelm-ing presence of the landscape. The landscape in Falstad is, after all, beautiful, and full of life. It is moving how the landscape has witnessed many things - that place being a concentration camp, amongst other things - and yet always manages to carry on, inte-grating each new event and also changing.

The Shared Roots project will foresees:

1. the reconstruction of greenhouse where it was and what it was like. Working under the surface and also on the surface will lead to a growth in relation to the ground, how the content of the underground affects the way the plants on surface could look. The different layers create a landscape that does con-stantly change, in which suggestions emerging from the local tracks - present or absent - live together and evoke many other places, real or imaginary, that maybe exist in our memory and that respond to the questions posed by the site and by the commitment;

2. an accommodation, along a first stretch of trail, of a series of plates with each flower to a country divided by a COR-TEN steel sheet (5m x 1m x 0,02m), anchored to the ground with a plinth. Each slab is silk-screened with the border of the coun-try of origin of flowers, and a zenith illuminating device is mounted and directed on each plate for light at night;

3. the installation of a second stretch of the trail along the path, before the entrance to the woods, with a COR-TEN steel plate at each end overlooking a field where you mix the flow-ers from all countries. Small COR-TEN steel benches allow for moments of rest along the two sections paved with teak iroko planks.

As the garden needs a cyclical care, we are obviously facing sea-sonal and changing traces: a monument - both ephemeral and per-


manent - that appears and disappears, and changes as time goes by. A way of reproduction of the lost original, tangible memory of what is no longer there. It, of course, responds to an adaptive cycle: many naturals elements from many places, each having their own resilience5. A war affects human relations in many ways. It is interesting to focus on those bonds created during that difficult time that were based on love, affection and mutual care. The life of many people got linked forever to Falstad, no matter where they came from. As an example of those bonds created, there’s a con-stant flux of people travelling from around Europe to Falstad to visit the place.

Hence the path should work as a device to start building - and further developing - a community (within the local/national insti-tutions, associations, private citizens and international partners), in order to strengthen a sense of belonging. People would become part of a community, through sharing and also understanding something that is partially concealed.

About flowers to be used in our intervention, we selected the vari-ous species according to some of the nationalities of the prisoners in the camp.

Please, see them listed as follows:

RED POPPY - Poland (as known as flower of remembrance)It is an herbaceous annual plant. The seed have to be sown in au-tumn in a secure environment and then transplanted in April/May. The plant is extremely productive, in one summer comes to bloom more than 400 flowers. As flower lasts only one day, do not always

6 The resilience is the ability of a biological entity, or generally of an ecosystem to respond to a perturbation, by resisting damage and recovering quickly and finally changing. So we call resilient a system that can evolve into multiples forms, ensuring preservation of the vitality of the functions and structures of the system itself.


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have the time to be fertilized, therefore to ensure an adequate pro-duction of seeds, it is necessary that the flowers are very numerous.

RED CLOVER (Trifolium pratense) - Denmark This plant has a good resistance to cold climat and has a toler-ance to soil acidity to ph 6.6/7.6. It requires regular water intakes. Clover varieties growing in Northern Europe may have life up to 4/5 years. It needs to be planted around February/March and has a slow growth during the first year.

LILY - France The meaning of this flower in military language is ‘be prepared to face any adversity’. It needs to be planted in draining soils, to be exposed to the sun and sheltered from the wind. It can be put in place in spring or autumn (where there is need for greater supply of manure). It also needs frequent repotting and copious watering.

WHITE ROSE - Finland (The Order of the White Rose - is one of three official orders in Finland, along with the Order of the Cross of Liberty, and the Order of the Lion of Finland. It was established by Gustaf Mannerheim in his capacity as regent on January 28, 1919. The name comes from the nine roses argent in the coat of arms of Finland)

Planting in October or January/February, the white rose can be grown on the ground or in a pot. Needs a good exposure to the sun and protected from draughts.

TULIP - Holland The tulip symbolizes rebirth. The bulbs can be stored in a dark place until autumn, when they are buried in a fresh and deep soil. They bloom in spring.

BROOM - Turkey The broom is a perennial plant that blooms in spring and summer. Cultivated in the garden or in a pot, fits high and low tempera-tures. It symbolizes, being flexible and tough, the man who knows how to accept the truth about his condition.


THISTLE - Sweden It is the is a symbol of isolation and loneliness. The thistle is a per-ennial herb which it’s planted in April and May. Flowering occurs from October to December. It can be grown in absence of light.

MIMOSA (Acacia dealbata) - ex YugoslaviaIt may appear as a tree or shrub characterised by rich yellow bloom and bushed leaves that compose a large irregular shaped hat. The Mimosa is grown either in pots that in open land, can reach con-siderable heights. It symbolizes strenght.

HOP (Homulus lupulus) - ex CzechoslovakiaHop is a climbing perennial plant of the family of Cannabacee with heart-shaped leaves and oval, which pulverized and dried fe-male inflorescences are used to spice the beer. It stands for injustice.

ROSEMARY (Rosmarinus officinalis) - HungaryThe branches of this shrub was used in antiquity in rites and fu-neral ones for the characteristics that were attributed to ward off evil spirits. Its scent, very persistent, was equated to the memory, the constancy, devotion to the memory.

CORNFLOWER - GermanyAccording to classical mythology it heals by the poison of a snake’s bite, in medieval symbolism the flower assumes the image of Je-sus that has defeated the devil (Snake). It symbolizes carefree and happiness.

VINCA (Periwinkle) - BelgiumOver time, the meaning of periwinkle has taken on many mean-ings but, according to the most recent, represents spiritual harmo-ny, suggested probably as symbol of the adaptability of the small shrub to different climates and grows easily to dense cover. A bunch of these showy blue flowers-periwinkle, Lilac-Blue, purple or pink, shows the love that you feel for those who receive it (being the love interest, the bride, a family member or a friend), while the white flowering reveals to the recipient the pleasure of remembering it.


ERICA - Norway Erica grows as landscape or garden plants for its floral effect. It associates well with conifers and a frequently seen in planting schemes as massed ground cover beneath varieties of dwarf coni-fers. It is capable of producing flower colour throughout the year. This plant can also be grown in tubs or window boxes to provide interest through autumn and into winter.

MARIGOLD (Calendula) - Fær Øer Islands It symbolizes the pain. It should be exposed to light and planted in a soft soil in September/October. It blooms a month later.

CARNATION (Dianthus) - ex URSS. Associated with grief. It requires sunny exposures, soil rich in or-ganic matter and minerals, compact limestone, and dry. It is mul-tiplied with sowing, by means of cuttings and division of tufts. Annual species are sown in spring or trailer in February, with flow-ering after 6 months. The industrially grown perennials as annu-als as well as sowing, are multiplied by scion in winter, with mats sheltered form frost; the blossoming begins in September/October until next spring.


Thriving

The project will feature that people from other countries could send the seeds to the camp and start to take care of this memory garden. We will seek cooperation with Foreign institutions, public or private entities participating in first person at birth, growth, and protection of the monument to its life over time. This will allow the creation of a network of people whose destinies got connected because of the roadmap of pain in the camp, people who come in Falstad from all around Europe to visit the site (veterans’ relatives, friends, tourists, passers- by, etc.).

People can approach this intervention in a superficial way, but this could also be a hint for some of the people visiting to dig more into the history of the place. We don’t want to build an emotional landscape but bring out memories through a relational approach. It’s like to give life to those memories through sharing. The artis-tic intervention is transformed into a shared process, a new space that produces relationships among all those who do take part. Peo-ple can recognize their own identities in those plants and flowers; they can feel a deep bond between memory and gratitude and take responsibility of keeping the memory’s surviving (through sending the seeds) outside of an institutional frame.

It is clear how far we are from the monument’s public function, as “in the public interest”. Shared Roots would reactivate the tradi-tional functions of the monument in new ways, so that alternative visions and narratives are simply possible, other than institutional ones. The artistic practice transforms the place of memory in an area of social dialogue, through a shared and productive process of relationships, in which ourselves, the authorities (or institutions) and the public (or the community) could be a part of.

Please see, as follows a list of possible institutions that, according to some of the nationalities of the prisoners in the camp, we be-


lieve could be interested in joining the network of relationships:

POLAND_RegoznicaGross-Rosen Museum (www.en.gross-rosen.eu)

The Gross-Rosen concentration camp was originally established in 1940 as a subcamp of the Sachsenhausen concentration camp. The camp was named for the nearby village of Gross-Rosen. Now called Rogoznica, the village is approximately 40 miles southwest of Wroclaw in present-day western Poland. In 1941, Gross-Rosen was designated an autonomous concentration camp.

DENMARK_RyvangenMindelunden i Ryvangen (www.mindelundenryvangen.dk)

Mindelunden (The Memorial Grove) is a memorial park in Ry-vangen in Copenhagen, Denmark. During the Second World War, the German occupying power executed members of the Danish resistance movement on this location. After the liberation the site was converted to a cemetery and a memorial park for the resist-ance members who were executed there.

FRANCE_LyonThe Centre d’histoire de la résistance et de la déportation (www.chrd.lyon.fr)

The Centre d’histoire is a museum in Lyon, located on the former site of a French military health school (École de Santé Militaire). The school was occupied by the Germans in the spring of 1943, and used by Lyon’s Gestapo to torture resistance members.

FINLAND_HelsinkiMilitary Museum of Finland (Sotamuseo) (www.sotamuseo.fi)

The Military Museum of Finland (Sotamuseo) displays military paraphernalia since the beginning of the fifteenth century to pre-sent. The museum is part of the Finnish National Defence Uni-versity.

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HOLLAND_WilnisHerzogenbusch concentration camp (www.nmkampvught.nl)

Herzogenbusch was a Nazi concentration camp located in Vught. It was, with Natzweiler-Struthof in occupied France, the only con-centration camp run directly by the SS in western Europe out-side of Germany. After the war the camp was used as a prison for Germans and Dutch collaborators. Today there is a visitors’ center with exhibitions and a national monument remembering the camp and its victims.

TURKEY_IstanbulThe Quincentennial Foundation - 500. Yil Vakfi (www.muze500.com)

This is the foundation that supports the Jewish Museum of Turkey where it is documented, inter alia, the period of the II World War and the stories of the Jewish Turks who housed during Nazism people from other European countries.

SWEDEN_StockholmEldred World War II Museum (www.eldredwwiimuseum.org)

The Eldred WWII Museum intends to fulfill its mission pledge by giving people of all ages the opportunity to learn about the history of WWII and by presenting unique exhibits about the WWII era.

Ex - Jugoslavia:

CROATIA_JasenovacJasenovac Research Institute (www.jasenovac.org)

The Jasenovac Research Institute is a non-profit human rights organization and a research institute, committed to establish-ing the truth about the Holocaust in Yugoslavia and dedicated to the search for justice for its victims. The JRI promotes re-search and activities designed to enlighten the world to the crimes of genocide committed at Jasenovac and wartime Yu-goslavia against Serbs, Jews and Romas and provides assistance


to all groups and individuals who likewise seek justice for these victims.

SERBIA_BelgradeStaro Sajmište (www.starosajmiste.info/en/)

Staro Sajmište is an urban neighborhood of Belgrade and it was the site of the Sajmište concentration camp (1941–1944). After the war the settlement was totally neglected for years and gradu-ally started falling apart. Former fair buildings were awarded to some prominent artists (painters and sculptors) as their ateliers. Finally on July 9, 1987, Belgrade City Assembly decided to make Staro Sajmište a cultural site, thereby protecting it from real-estate expansion development. However, almost nothing was done to conserve the area and today Staro Sajmište is in a very bad shape. The project ‘A Visit to Staro Sajmište’ is supported by Fond B92 and Rosa Luxemburg Foundation.

Ex - CZECHOLSOVAKIA_LidiceLidice Memorial (www.lidice-memorial.cz/default_en.aspx)

The intent of Lidice Memorial is to take care of permanent preser-vation of the remembrance of the town of Lidice and the suffering of its residents, who in 1942 became victims of Nazi violence, and to keep the name of the Lidice Village as the world’s symbol of all the victims of war crimes.

HUNGARY_BudapestThe Public Foundation for the Research of Central and East European History and Society - House of Terror Museum (www.terrorhaza.hu/en/)

Having survived two terror regimes, it was felt that the time had come for Hungary to erect a fitting memorial to the victims, and at the same time to present a picture of what life was like for Hun-garians in those times. In December 2000 ‘The Public Foundation for the Research of Central and East European History and Soci-ety’ purchased the building with the aim of establishing a museum

in order to present these two bloody periods of Hungarian history.

GERMANY_WeimarBuchenwald and Mittelbau-Dora Memorials Foundation (www.buchenwald.de)

The foundation’s purpose is to preserve the sites of the crimes as sites of mourning and commemoration, to provide these sites with a scientifically founded form and outward appearance and to make them accessible to the public in an appropriate manner, as well as to promote education through the research of the respective his-torical occurrences and their conveyance to the public.

BELGIUM_WillebroekBreendonk Memorial (www.breendonk.be/index.html)

During the Second World War, the fort Breendock was used by the Germans as a prison camp for detaining Belgian political dis-sidents, captured resistance members and Jews. Many were tor-tured or executed within the camp. Today, the site is a national memorial and can be visited.

FAROE ISLANDS_VagurVágs Bygdasavn, Vágur and World War II (www.vagsbygdasavn.com)

This is a small museum with a collection of ship models of the nine ships from Vágur, which went missing during World War II. Some of them were bombed by German submarines, others had accidents and some of ships nobody knows what happened.

Ex - URSS:

LATVIA_RigaOccupation Museum Association of Latvia (www.hokupacijas-muzejs.lv)

The Museum of the Occupation plays an essential role in restoring

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and reinforcing historical awareness and consciousness in Latvia. During the occupation period (1940–1991) history was the hand-maiden of alien totalitarian ideologies and regimes. Their censor-ship had removed or grossly distorted historical events that the ruling regimes wanted to erase from human memory, such as the Hitler–Stalin pacts, the Holocaust, mass deportations, repressions and many others.

BELARUS_MinskMemorial to the Tragedy of Dalva (www.dalva.narod.ru)

A memorial set up in 1973 commemorates the murder of the resi-dents of the village Dalva close to Minsk. German troops locked the village residents in a house in June 1944 and burned down the entire village. The memorial was constructed on the initiative of a survivor of the tragedy.

LIETUVA (Kaunas)Kauno IX Forto Muziejus (www.9fortomuziejus.lt/istorija/ix-fortas/)

The Ninth Fort is a stronghold in the northern part of Kaunas, Lithuania. It is a part of the Kaunas Fortress, which was construct-ed in the late 19th century. During the occupation of Kaunas and the rest of Lithuania by the Sovoet Union, the fort was used as a prison and way-station for prisoners being transported to labour camps. After the occupation of Lithuania by Nazy Germany, the fort was used as a place of execution for Jews, captured Soviets, and others.


The Chalk Circle

About us

“The past is a property-owner’s luxury” ( Jean-Paul Sartre, Nausea)

We thought of a chalk circle as an act of drawing a ritual and fragile contextualization. As something that brings together, or maintains together, things that are distinct, as with a set, in mathematics, indicating that those entities could also be regarded, under certain conditions, as a unit. Because some peculiarities are shared among the members, so with the same attitude we intend to create specific contexts for discussion.

If the monument has to testify the need to build a collective mem-ory (as something which is nearly impossible to talk about but, surely, not forgettable), on the other hand it freezes in time - and space - the unacceptable and traumatic in the events of the past. In this sense, memory has to do with the construction of the memory itself, as a process of construction of forgetfulness, a sort of am-nesia of those parts of the past that for some reasons would be a rift in the dominant narrative of the story. The artistic approach in this regard in recent years is working on re-displaying in new ways based on relationships, in order to bring different narratives and visions, from those in institutional arrangements and in those “authorized” to speak. The artistic intervention is transformed into a shared process, a new space that produces relationships among all players who take part: the artist, the authorities (or institu-tions) and the public (or the community). So the idea of asserting a “truth”, it is replaced by a research process that opens a view on the past where there are some areas of contact, some points of en-counter and confrontation.


The chalkers are:

Micol Rispoli

Micol was born in Ischia where she currently lives. She graduates in Architecture at the University Federico II of Naples. In February, she earns a Master’s degree in Museum Curator. She have taken part in numerous seminars and workshops, including, finally, that of the PIDA 2012, working with the Austrian architects feld72 on sustainable and low budget reuse of an abandoned village on the island of Ischia (Na). In addition to the design experience during and after her university studies, matures a strong interest in con-temporary art and art-architecture relationship, with particular at-tention to urban and social context. She also is an amateur photog-rapher and a member of the Circolo Culturale di Ischia Georges Sadoul - Italian Institute for Philosophical Studies.

Emanuela Murro

She studied in L’Aquila Foreign Languages and Literatures. After her studies, she have been working abroad particularly in Event’s organization. She has been studying for some time, together with the Archaeologist Giovanni Murro, history of the Second World War, with particular attention to the Polish II Corps (known as the Anders Army) from the formative period upon the arrival in Italy, and resistance movements in Italy and Europe. In the meantime, she grows an interest in Photography and in the anthropological aspects of Contemporary Theatre. Through the Master Course in Events and Museum Curator at IED in Rome, she focuses her re-search also on Contemporary Art, particularly on the representa-tive and performative aspects and its documentation.

Daniela Iannella

Daniela earns a degree in Scenic Design at the Academy of Fine Arts in Bologna. During the course of her study, she experienc-es both as Assistant Scenic Designer and as Costume Designer, within some videos making. She later went on to pursue her inter-est in Contemporary Art (especially in experimental music and

theater) through the Master Course in Events and Museum Cura-tor at IED in Rome, focusing her research on the new possibilities of expression that contemporary art offers to relate with the public, and investigating especially the innovative display and performa-tive methods that result, both from the point of view of organiza-tion than of setting.

Lúa Coderch

She lives and works in Barcelona. Formed as a sculptor, nowa-days her practice involves all kinds of formats and contexts, in-cluding lectures, installation, sound works and performances. Her work points at how things (such as ideas, images, regimes) get to have their shape, at how they are constructed, in a process of for-malization of the real. Her main area of interest go from history to economics, from politics to biography. As a practitioner, she’s interested in exploring ways of putting into practice this effect of impoverishment, deflation, separation or deactivation, an effect that occurs in many different ways, not only by accident or chance, and without necessarily provoking laughter. The aim is to act as an extremely attentive expectator, mainly provoking strategic shifts in perception through display, displacement and re-contextualization of preexistent images and objects.

Giovanni Murro

Born in 1980, currently lives and works in Rome. He earns a de-gree in Archeology at University La Sapienza in Rome and a PhD in Classical Archaeology at University of Salento in Lecce. He has been studying for some time now, together with the independent curator Emanuela Murro, the history of World War II and the resistance movements in Italy and Europe. He focuses particularly on in the history of the Polish II Corps (known as the Anders Army), from the formative period upon the arrival in Italy.

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Bibliography

W. Benjamin, Über den Begriff der Geschicht, in Walter Benjamin gesammelte Schriften, vol. I-2, Suhrkamp, Frankfurt, 1950. W. Benjamin, Das Passagen-Werk, hrsg. von Rolf Tiedemann, 2 Bände, Suhrkamp, Frankfurt am Main, 1983.R. Bocchi, Strutture narrative e progetto di paesaggio. Tracce per un racconto, in Sara Marini, Cristina Barbiani (a cura di), Il palinsesto paesaggio e la cultura progettuale, Quodlibet, Macerata, 2010.T. Borowski, This Way for the Gas, Ladies and Gentlemen, Penguin Books, London, 1992.A. Corboz, Le territoire comme palimpseste et autres essays, Besan-çon, Editions de l’Imprimeur, 2001.M. De Certau, L’Invention du quotidien. Vol. I. Arts de faire, Union Générale d’Éditions, Paris, 1990.L. Ghirri, Identikit, 1977.H. Langbein, People in Auschwitz, North Carolina Press, 2004.J.F. Lyotard, Le Différend, Paris, Minuit, 1983.F. Müller, Eyewitness Auschwitz - Three Years in the Gas Chambers, Chicago, Ivan R. Dee & in association with the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, 1979.M. Paolini, Ausmerzen. Vite indegne di essere vissute, 2011 (www.vimeo.com/19445876).B. Pietromarchi, Il luogo (non) comune. Arte, spazio pubblico ed es-tetica urbana in Europa, Actar, 2005.V.T. Šalamov, I racconti di Kolyma, trad. Sergio Rapetti, Einaudi, Torino, 1999.A. Schulte Nordholt, Perec, Modiano, Raczymow, La génération d’après et la mémoire de la Shoah, Rodopi, 2008.A. Spiegelman, Maus. A survivor’s tale, in Row, 1986.J. Turkow, C’était ainsi, 1939-1943, la vie dans le ghetto de Varsovie, Austral, 1995.


REcall docs - Shared Roots bookPublished by Politecnico di Milano, DAStU© The Authors: Creative Commons: license CC BY SA 3.0

shared roots book

REcall is a research project founded by EC Culture 2007-13 Programme focused on the possible roles Museography can play when dealing with Difficult Heritage such as the ones coming from conflicts and wars. REcall wishes to envision new ways to the handling of Painful Places & Stories going behind any traditional approach: there is the need to shift from the ‘simply’ commemoration attitude to a more active involvement and participa-tion of people in/with Places & Stories, through design strategies of ‘reappropria-tion’ (www.recall-project.polimi.it).

edited byThe Chalk Circle:

Micol Rispoli, Emanuela Murro, Daniela Iannella, Lúa Coderch, Giovanni Murro

REcall is a research project funded by EC Cluture 2007-13 Programme (n. 2012 - 0927 / 001 - 001 CU7 COOP7)

REcall

Documents

Shared roots