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Cambridge Heritage Research Centre

 

 

Event Speaker: Dr Jessie Fyfe (Director of Studies: Architecture, Emmanuel College)       

Online via Zoom! Registration required - click here

 

'Unsettled Landscapes': The role of landscape in the memorial dynamics of Post-War Croatian Hinterlands

What may be communicated in the destruction of a landscape is bound to its capability to efface, to weather, and deteriorate as well as to renew and regenerate. Landscape is perceived to be linked to the special temporal condition of the cyclical nature of growth and adaptation: it is afforded a perceived primordial status, a characterisation that can be seen as a kind of violence itself as these natural processes can physically conceal, alter, and suppress evidence of conflict and trauma. The manifestations of these perceptions of landscape shape the histories and biographies of place and mark the land as 'unsettled' in the ongoing processes of both place and memory making.

The paper will explore the tensions in the materiality, spatiality, and temporality of landscape that impact the commemoration practices following the historical and more recent conflicts within Croatia. It will consider two memorials in borderland landscapes in order to contribute to contemporary discussions on the cultural spaces of memory in post war Croatia and, by implication, more broadly, by demonstrating that landscape affords particular opportunities and sets particular conditions for local and official memory practices in response to traumatic events.

Date: 
Thursday, 18 March, 2021 - 13:00 to 14:00
Contact name: 
Ben Davenport
Contact email: 
Event location: 
Online via Zoom