Politeja (Jul 2015)
Czas zawarty w przestrzeni
Abstract
Since the 1980s the concepts of spatial forms commemorating Holocaust, or to embrace it wider, the victims of the Nazi regime, have been increasingly moving away from the principle presented in the period of “memory witnesses and guardians”. For a good reason here Robert Musil’s opinion is commonly quoted; claiming the monuments which had been erected to draw a great attention, remain invisible. James E. Young – the author of the term counter‑monument referring to objects representing a new way of thinking of their messages, their roles and forms they are able to express – wrote at the beginning of the 1990s: “The further shifted in the past are the events of WWII, the more glamorous its monuments become”. Whereas several most significant commemorating monuments of a new trend gain their minimalist, nearly non‑existing form, a great majority of them are of incomparably larger scale with a wider range of means of expression. The examples selected to be analysed are contemporary Polish projects of commemorating forms in Bełżec (proj. A. Sołyga, Z. Pidyk, M. Roszczyk, DDJM), in Gross‑Rosen (proj. Nizio Design International), in Michniów (proj. Nizio Design International) and in Sobibór (proj. M. Urbanek, P. Michalewicz, Ł. Mieszkowski). In linear narrative there is an active presence of the visitors provoked; the scenery is meant to evoke threat, confusion and seclusion. Commemorating forms designed with a flourish are becoming total monuments, accused of aestheticization of death. Monuments as culture memory bearers in the meaning suggested by Aleida Assmann, have always been expressions of their founders’ intentions and their attitudes towards the past, and like in all other times, they constitute a reflection of us– the contemporary.
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