Collective memory under siege

by Stefan Lazarevski

The recently held Bauhaus Kolloquium in Weimar revealed several issues that planners, architects, sociologists and other city researchers are being occupied with at the moment. The questions of control and freedom, core and periphery, state and society as well as networks that are enforced, based on Michael Hardt’s and Antonio Negri’s perception of the new World-order, were addressed. There were two focal points; the relationship between theory and practice overshadowed by the economic, political, social and moral issues that pervade in any globalized society; and how to escape the conformist role that architecture tends to aspire by focusing on moods, ornaments and atmospheres.
Sounds familier? Yes, it already had been an issue in the early 20’s when the founders of Bauhaus Gropius and Mies van der Rohe demanded a “resolute affirmation” of the current conditions and responses adequate of the needs, goals and the time.

Now, standing in the turning point of humanity, clinched between economic and moral crises, architecture must once again rise and answer the social dilemmas. This can, very easily, be understood as self-centered and arrogant position of architects but it also must be considered that, as Keller Easterling said in her expose, some of the most radical changes to the globalized world are being written, not in the language of law and diplomacy, but rather in the language of architecture, urbanism and infrastructure. Finally, the city is the physical evidence of the collective memory and the changes in global trends will most definitely be embedded in the urban form and architectural language and as such will remain to justify our actions in the society of our time.

In her book “The city of collective memory”, Christine Boyer asks probably one of the most fundamental question of the identity of cities and ultimately the nation states; the question of what is collective memory? Today when identity is attacked by forces of globalization, is the collective memory under siege? This question seems to be very liable in a societies that are driven by political figures and pseudo-scientific workers on constant alert of strengthening the national identity. The rise of the nation states has mobilized and commercialized the collective memory, bringing it to a mere product, that can be easily sold, once it’s branded. This only proves that collective memory is rather political question than programmatic and in most of the cases it has nothing to do with the past. The reflection of such memory is to be found in different layers of the city which piled over the time.

However, what happens with the memory once it has been subjected to the instants of war, of genocide, of totalitarian rule or nationalistic amnesia? Is it a break from conventional form of memory or an absolute memory free situation? Christine Boyer argues that memory is absolute zero in such actions, that Bogdan Bogdanovic describes as urbicid; but she does not differentiate the true from the false memory. Perhaps this is the right approach, because if collective memory conveys only data, than the value of that information or its accuracy is of no importance to the identity structure. Then why totalitarian rule is bad for collective memory? In the globalized world, most of the spectacular architectural production by star architects happens in countries with soft or absolute totalitarian rule. The cities in these countries get inerasable urban form and thus build up its own collective memory.

“The more centralized the power, the less compromises need to be made in architecture” says Peter Eisenman. However, the liability of such collective memory hovers over the issues of morality, truth and its independent reading. Sure, we have the chicken, but is it really not important if it came first or was it the egg. The lack of dialog, transparency and process, corrupts and undermines this collective memory giving it a questionable and false face. Yes, it is a memory but it is a declarative one.

Professor Eckardt in his expose on modern Empires refers to Foucalt’s ideas of understanding urban society and says that it is all about power. People are controlled by places, by its culture and habits and most certainly by the different forms of power such as the State or the modern companies. Sometimes, they are controlled by the burden of its own collective memory. It is also true that people are the creators of all forms of control and they are the ultimate key in changing them.

“Before any process of memorization can take effect, silencing has to be undone.”
Christine Boyer

This text has been inspired by the lecture ''Collective memory under siege in the age of Empire'' held by M. Christine Boyer on the 11th International Bauhaus Kolloquium in Weimar.