Difficult heritage and immersive experiences

Abstract

Since the 1970s, the commemoration and preservation of “difficult heritage”, a term coined by Sharon Macdonald over 15 years ago, has become a subject of increasing public attention. In the escalation of the European historical turn to memory, we are witnessing the emergence of a new dimension: The distinction of place through reference to historical narrative, whereby historical content is legitimized through exhibitions, memorial plaques and other modes of urban commemoration. However, despite the opportunities afforded by immersion, there has been a lack of substantive evidence to evaluate current approaches and guide future developments, especially in difficult heritage sites. Particularly in Europe, immersion has not been employed widely in such sites. The case studies considered in the present volume and discussed in this introduction illustrate how international developments in theory and in the practice of immersive experiences in the field of “difficult heritage” reflect the transition from what M. J. Rymsza-Pawlowska describes as the logic of preservation, an understanding of history underwritten by material evidence and expressed by a sense of the past as monumental and spectacular, to the present experiential engagements with history.