The TAKE THE PLACE WITH YOU course aims to contribute and take part in assembling a memorial at the site of the former KZ-Außenlager Aflenz in the southern Styrian village of Aflenz an der Sulm.
The restaging of familiar commemorative models that characterize a multitude of memorials, monuments, and historical museums does not seem sufficient for a contemporary approach to memorialization. TAKE THE PLACE WITH YOU challenges the assumption that memorials should be assembled as an ossifying material space of memorialization, rather conceiving of it as a changing, momentary and fluid space that takes memory into the presence of every-day life, beyond the mere memorialization praxis. We will look for an environment wherein history, memory and knowledge are nourished through the lives and practices of all who continue to live, visit, or have interest in the site.
THE SITE / HOW TO ENGAGE?
Students engagement within the TAKE THE PLACE WITH YOU course will be enveloped around the following questions: how to approach the difficult subject and history? – what is the form that speaks about and activates the space? – when does an act or a thing become a memorial? - and, equally important, where is the memorial situated?
These questions will be the guiding beacons of this course. They emphasize that this future memorial is assembling can be conceived of as fleeting, momentary and contextual. Only such a memorial can capture the histories, knowledge, and memories deeply entangled with and defined by the past in the present.
WHAT WILL THE PLACE BE?
The course is about how to formulate an environment that is not built upon abstraction or great concepts. Rather, it aims to be a humble place, still bearing the fullness of life; a place wherein memory becomes present and grows through future generations.
SITE VISIT AND GUEST LECTURERS
Site visit and guiding through the former KZ-Außenlager Aflenz, Wagna, Styria
Atelier Le Balto, landscape architects, Berlin/Paris - lecture and critique
Ana Bezić, archaeologist, Rijeka
Bertrand Perz, historian, Vienna