Difficult Heritage Research Articles

Legacy of Fascist Architecture. Ideology and Conservation: the case of the former Casa del Fascio e dell’Ospitalità in Predappio

The Casa del Fascio e dell'Ospitalita of Predappio is a significant case study of an iconic building that, more than others, has materialized the “architectural propaganda” of the fascist regime in Italy between the two World Wars. The project by Arnaldo Fuzzi (1891-1974) was supposed to be the manifesto of the architectural and technological progress of the Fascist regime, but it will become instead an expression of the failure of its management skills. In the post-war period, this building fell into a state of neglect, due both to the fact that it was one of the most symbolic architectureS of the regime and to the inability to find an adequate re-use – becoming a sort of “dead monument”. In 2010 the former Casa del Fascio was appointed a “listed building” giving a boost to the preservation of this architecture as a document of a “difficult heritage”. The present contribution matches historical research and preservation, explaining the path that leads up to the current restoration project (2019-2020). The intervention methodology searches for a balance between the preservation of the building identity and the necessary adaptation to the current needs, choosing a multidisciplinary and coordinated approach.

Bunkers as difficult heritage: imagining future for underground spaces in Seoul

ABSTRACT This paper examines underground bunkers in Seoul and explores different ways of reusing spaces that have a problematic heritage. In particular, I look at three bunkers in Seoul – the Yeouido, Kyeongheegung, and Daebangdong bunkers – in comparison to subway stations and other underground spaces designated as potential shelters by the state. I divide the bunkers into two types: those that have been in disuse or used for non-military purposes in peacetime, a distinction that corresponds to two different ways of envisaging disused bunkers. I argue that, unlike in the US and Germany, where wartime bunkers offered a psychological defense, in South Korea, bunkers failed to instill a sense of security, and so they contributed to the absence of discourse in South Korea about a possible life underground or a “bunker society.” After analyzing the three bunkers and comparing them to more mundane underground spaces, the paper concludes that bunkers can be incorporated into everyday uses through small-scale design interventions that encourage resident participation, and this incorporation will not necessarily entail a loss of memory or a trivialization of traumatic historical events.

Set in Stone?:

Memorials to white explorers and pioneers long stood (virtually) unchallenged in the heart of Australia’s towns and cities. By occupying civic space, they served to legitimise narratives of conquest and dispossession, colonising minds in the same ways ‘settlers’ seized vast tracts of territory. The focus of this article is a memorial raised to the memory of three white explorers, ‘murdered’ (it was claimed) by ‘treacherous natives’ on the north west frontier. It examines the ways that historians and the wider community took issue with this relic of the colonial past in one of the first encounters in Australia’s statue wars. The article explores the concept of ‘dialogical memorialisation’ examining the way that the meanings of racist memorials might be subverted and contested and argues that far from ‘erasing’ history attacks on such monuments constitute a reckoning with ‘difficult heritage’ and a painful and unresolved past. It addresses the question of whose voice in empowered in these debates, acknowledges the need for white, archival based history to respect and learn from Indigenous forms of knowledge and concludes that monuments expressing the racism of past generations can become platforms for truth telling and reconciliation.

Introduction. Difficult Heritage and Its Making

Fascist Italy and Nazi Germany, along with other twentieth-century authoritarian regimes, have often attempted to create consensus through propagandistic reinterpretations of the classical past. As recent scholarship has shown, the Fascist appropriation of romanità and Nazi philhellenism were not only conditioned by earlier cultural conceptions but were also a key political tool in motivating and mobilising citizens to fulfil the aims of the fascist state (Roche, Bartolini & Schmaltz 2019). Once Fascism and Nazism had fallen, the material legacies of both regimes then became objects of destruction, reinterpretation and memory work. Thus, the archaeological and architectural heritage of these regimes, now tainted by their ideology, has not only suffered the consequences of damnatio memoriae in the aftermath of regime change, but continues even today to inflame contemporary public debate.

Difficult Heritage. The Experience of the Fossoli Camp Foundation

The historic site of Fossoli Camp is a unique stone witness which still bears the marks left by the central years of the twentieth century. During the Second World War it was a national camp for racial and political deportees, but its story extends to the 1970s when it was used to house civilian orphans and refugees. Today it is a place where history blends with experience and education.
 The primary goal of the Fossoli Foundation is the protection and preservation of the Camp’s heritage, together with its enhancement through activities including research, documentation, and education to promote cultural awareness.
 The Foundation focuses especially on close co-operation with schools, developing targeted educational projects and pathways for both students and teachers, with organised visits to its own memorial sites and other European ones. European projects and partnerships represent an increasing part of its activities, and the Foundation is now a member of several national and international networks.

Colston’s Travels, or Should We Talk About Statues?

The toppling of slave trader Edward Colston’s statue in Bristol on 7th June 2020, and its dispatch into the waters of the nearby harbour – a defiant act of protest by members of Britain’s ‘Black Lives Matter’ movement – helped to raise international awareness that far too many statues and other artefacts within the urban realm carry troubling histories, even if their contentious associations might have been forgotten. Acting as quasi-Trojan horses, they can appear benign enough within their cultural landscapes while yet silently continuing to reinforce socio-economic inequalities. This essay investigates the incident in Bristol to offer a wider reassessment of those cultural legacies now seen as ‘difficult heritage’, particularly those associated with slave trading in the former British Empire. It looks at how the cultural value of the Colston statue, when viewed over time in relation to material and ideological conditions in Bristol as a declining port city, creates a real tension in their meaning today given that they so obviously represent a highly selective construction of local history. The increasingly vociferous demand globally for the removal of such sculptures, especially by the ‘Black Lives Matter’ movement, exposes the ongoing evasiveness and indecisiveness of official bodies in dealing with such artefacts. While the final outcome of the toppling of the Colston statue remains in the balance in terms of its legal resolution, the role of urban art as part of activism and protest clearly demands more attention. This essay traces the emergence of debates about ‘difficult heritage’ as a combination of social performance and civil disobedience. As this kind of struggle continues, the urgent questions become who should be allowed to determine what is considered history and how should it be displayed in our urban public spaces?

Shu-Mei Huang and Hyun Kyung Lee, Heritage, Memory and Punishment: Remembering Colonial Prisons in East Asia and Hyun Kyung Lee, ‘Difficult Heritage’ in Nation Building: South Korea and Post-Conflict Japanese Colonial Occupation Architecture

Shu-Mei Huang and Hyun Kyung Lee, Heritage, Memory and Punishment: Remembering Colonial Prisons in East Asia and Hyun Kyung Lee, ‘Difficult Heritage’ in Nation Building: South Korea and Post-Conflict Japanese Colonial Occupation Architecture

Into the Contact Zones of Heritage Diplomacy: Local Realities, Transnational Themes and International Expectations

Heritage is increasingly promoted as a tool for economic and social development to help rebuild societies that have suffered conflict and deep social trauma. Heritage diplomacy is an emergent form of cultural relations that forms a ‘contact zone’ between different stakeholders and divergent expectations. This paper explores some aspects of this field of heritage diplomacy and develops a basic typology by contrasting the tension between the uses of ‘charismatic heritage diplomacy’ and more ‘careful heritage diplomacy’. It examines differences between local realities and international expectations of heritage by bringing together two case studies: one from a Creative Europe–funded project where civil society actors develop strategies for working with the difficult heritage that lies behind nationalist myths, and the other from a British Council–funded programme dealing with endangered heritage in the MENA region. Critical studies of heritage-making often pitch the local against the international, with grassroot activities contrasted with international rhetoric surrounding heritage places, objects and practices. However, this dichotomy can mask other actors and social dynamics, not least the subtleties of how the collective traumas of conflict play out in the cultural field. The idea of heritage diplomacy as a ‘contact zone’ (Clifford 1997) highlights that heritage-making in (post-)conflict cultural relations is an ontological encounter between international agents and the traumatised communities for whom the stakes are, inevitably, higher. Mediated through the transnational best practices of heritage professionals, and through the visible pragmatism of civil society heritage activists, the impacts of heritage-making nevertheless remain complicated and entangled.

"Difficult Heritage" & Selective Elision: The Seoul Power Plant.

In the early twenty-first century, postcolonial cities such as Seoul possess built structures and support infrastructure (electric power, gas, and water) dating to earlier periods of history. The challenge of doing public history lies in approaching the heritage issues associated with how these structures may be retained. In the Korean case, using the Dangin-ri power plant site as a case study, this article illustrates how national planners, developers, and city officials have elided and emphasized certain aspects of history embedded within these structures. Originally a Japanese-built coal plant, later augmented with American and Korean construction, Dangin-ri continues to supply power to Seoul through new underground construction. At the same time, KOMIPO, the power company, has altered the site's features to include a public exhibition space, along with a wetlands and nature area. The "difficult heritage" associated with the Japanese colonial period (1910-1945) appears less conspicuous within this revised scheme, while also exhibiting the changes that came to the city following the heavy industrialization campaigns of the 1970s.

Fascism on display: the afterlife of material legacies of the dictatorship

The year 2015 marked the seventy-fifth anniversary of the end of World War II, a commemoration that prompted Italy to reconsider the complexity of the Fascist phenomenon and how the artistic creations and urbanism of the regime contributed to shaping city landscapes across the country. Fascist material legacies are an unequivocal presence in any Italian city, but the ways in which they have been preserved or not, reused or abandoned, provokes consideration of the complexities of the country’s renegotiation of its Fascist past, shifting from iconoclasm to present-day heritage status. Heritage designation and the restoration of Fascist works of art and architecture have posed questions regarding selectivity in heritage and whether Italy has yet to come to terms with its Fascist past. This paper will look at how Italy’s approach to Fascist heritage, which has recently been framed as ‘difficult heritage’ following Macdonald’s work on Nazi Germany, is an expression of the conflicting narratives that surround any renegotiation of the Fascist past, and how some recent conservation projects and exhibition have failed to demonstrate reflexivity over Fascism. It will also deconstruct the role of restoration and the heritage practices of preservation and management and will question the link between conservation and changes of attitude regarding a ‘difficult’ past.

Through the eyes of the Potala Palace: Difficult heritage and memory in Tibet

The Potala Palace in Lhasa, Tibet serves as an important religious symbol and an embodiment of Tibetan culture. Ever since Chinese troops invaded Tibet in the 1950s, the Chinese government has attempted to control Tibet, including converting the Potala Palace and its rich material culture into a secular institution on display for tourists. Now void of the Dalai Lama and most of its contents, the Potala has become a façade for public consumption of Chinese state-led narratives and a symbol of cultural oppression. Through their approaches to heritage management and tourism, and with the aid of the Potala’s listing as a UNESCO World Heritage site, China is capitalizing on Tibet’s cultural heritage, undermining the Tibetan people and their culture, and controlling the narrative of Tibetan history to alter the collective memory of Tibetans.

Wpływ wojennych wydarzeń dziejowych (res gestae) i relacji o nich (historie rerum gestarum) na kondycję materialnych pozostałości po tych wydarzeniach. Studium przypadku na temat dziedzictwa konfliktów zbrojnych jako wyzwania poznawczego i społecznego

In the article we consider the relationship between the poor condition of material remains of the Great War on one of the former Eastern Front’s battlefield’s in the Rawka and Bzura region with the long term attitudes of the local population towards the soldiers of Russian and German armies, fighting and killed there. For this purpose, we have analyzed written sources and witnesses accounts, as well asartifacts from archaeological research. We assume that recognizing situation of the local population during the events of 1914–1915 and after the war may bring us closer to answering the questions posed herein. Thus, we suppose, that loss of property, extremely difficult conditions of everyday life, illnesses and suffering, fear of military authorities and soldiers, of epidemic factors and infectious diseases, death of lovedones also those enlisted in the armies of the occupiers – these types of traumatic experiences – conditioned the attitude of the local population towards soldiers of the Great War. Some lasting consequences of this can be observed till today – in the form of fading traces of the material heritage of the Great War. Focusing on the material and discursive dimensions, we analyze the relationships between the primary (res gestae) and consequential/secondary processes (rerum gestarum histories and narrations) and observe a kind of causative “breaking the continuity” between them. Using the methods of historical archaeology, archaeology of recent past, memory studies, history etc., creates interesting, but so far poorly used, research possibilities. Most importantly, it can contribute to shaping attitudes characterized by historical and archaeological sensitivity and the will to understand the value of a difficult heritage (including resting places of fallen soldiers) and to prompt active care for it.

Animation of a Local Urban Community. Sebastian Latocha Talks to Remigiusz Kaczmarek, the Chairman of the Józef Montwiłł-Mirecki Community Council in Łódź

How do you nurture common welfare in a modern city? What is the role of local urban communities and the networked cooperation of numerous bodies like community councils, district NGOs, neighbourhood initiatives and particular individuals (animators, activists, involved citizens) – in creating a community, which, being subject to the municipality’s activity, does not patiently await its fate, but takes matters into its own hands? What impact does the history, tradition, urban planning and architecture, local symbols, rituals and institutions of a location have on creating a sense of identity for that given place and for creating an atmosphere of education, animation and activity in the public sphere in cooperation ‘with’ (and not ‘for’) the local community? How do Community Councils support and develop neighbourhood communities? An interview with Remigiusz Kaczmarek, the Chairman of the Jozef Montwill-Mirecki Community Council in Łodź, reveals how the difficult heritage of this district provided the residents with a model of collaboration and social participation. The case of this modernist housing estate constructed in Łodź before the Second World War shows the dynamics of urban local community development based on the common experience of its residents.

“What Shall We Do With It Now?”: The Palazzo della Civiltà Italiana and the Difficult Heritage of Fascism

This article uses the Palazzo della Civiltà Italiana (PdCI) in the Rome suburb of EUR as a case study to explore how Italians have negotiated the “difficult heritage” of Fascism since 1945. Following Sharon Macdonald, the paper understands the term difficult heritage to refer to a historically significant past that remains materially visible through sites, buildings, artworks, monuments and other artefacts, but which is difficult to reconcile with “a positive, self‐affirming contemporary identity”. The paper employs a biographical approach to reveal and analyse the post‐Fascist “lives” of the PdCI, one of the most recognisable — and, in recent decades, most admired — examples of Fascist monumental architecture in Italy. With reference also to other examples of difficult Fascist heritage in Italy, and to sites associated with the difficult heritage of Nazism in Germany, the paper offers new insights into how Italy has confronted its Fascist past and places the Italian experience of difficult heritage within the broader international context.

La desobediencia civil de las memorias ¿Debe ser conservado el Centro Cultural Gabriela Mistral callejero del Estallido Social? Santiago de Chile, del 18 de octubre 2019 al 09 de marzo 2020

En este trabajo, nos aproximaremos a las disputas de las memorias, que generó el intento gubernamental de borrar las expresiones artísticas plasmadas por el Estallido Social, en los muros del Centro Cultural Gabriela Mistral. Las protestas que comenzaron el 18 de octubre del 2019 y que se extendieron hasta las marchas feministas del 8 y 9 de marzo del 2020, generaron varias interrogantes a partir de la explosión del pasado: ¿Qué tipo de desobediencia civil protagonizan las memorias? ¿Qué hacer cuando el campo de acción de estos movimientos sociales, reivindica y logra instalar sus símbolos en el espacio público? Esta aproximación la haremos revisitando el pasado del GAM, que ya enfrentó intentos gubernamentales por borrar connotaciones anteriores, así podremos comprender por qué este Centro Cultural es un espacio en disputa y un patrimonio difícil.

CURATORSHIP PRAXISES TOWARDS ‘DISPLACED ASSETS’ IN POST-1989 MUSEUM PROJECTS: TWO EXHIBITIONS AT WARSAW’S XAWERY DUNIKOWSKI MUSEUM

Two exhibitions at the Xawery Dunikowski Museum of Sculpture at the Królikarnia Palace, branch of the National Museum in Warsaw: the ‘Inventorying’ Display-Research Project, which was a kind of a public inventory of the sculpture collection (2012) and the Exhibition ‘The Estate. Sculptures from the collection of the Von Rose family and films and photographs from the archive of Zofia Chomętowska’ (2015) are case studies serving the Author to analyse curatorship practices with respect to the collections whose major part is composed of ‘displaced assets’, first of all from the so-called ‘Regained Territories’. In the words of the Chief Curator at the Królikarnia Museum since 2011 and the Exhibitions’ Curator Agnieszka Tarasiuk: it is a troublesome collection testifying to a difficult heritage and not yielding to conservation. The paper’s methodological basis is the museum exhibits’ provenance research conducted by R. Olkowski, L.M. Kamińska, and M. Romanowska-Zadrożna, while its context is found in the programme assumptions of the Strategy for the Operations and Development of the National Museum in Warsaw 2010–2020 worked out by the former National Museum’s Director Piotr Piotrowski. One of its priorities is to clarify the origins of the collections of unknown provenance, and settling accounts with their former owners. Furthermore, the question related to constructing museum’s genealogy and the memory of history of the period immediately following WWII in the new socio-political situation in Poland after 1989 is posed. The position for dealing with collections’ provenance research introduced by P. Piotrowski was liquidated following the Director’s dismissal in 2012. The paper forms part of a bigger whole.

Sustainable Conservation of a Difficult Heritage in South Korea: Mapping the Conservation Resources of Sorok-do Island, Hansen’s Disease Site

South Korea’s Sorok-do island bears witness to the 100-year history of the Sorok-do hospital and the village for Hansen’s disease (leprosy) patients. All the facilities of Sorok-do were established by the Japanese imperial authorities, and the collective memories of social isolation and discrimination against Hansen’s disease patients were deeply embedded in this island during the colonial and post-colonial periods. Despite changing perceptions toward the conservation of the island’s history since the 1990s, the island’s deep collective memory remains at risk due to the increasing number of incoming settlers and the shrinking number of Hansen’s disease patients since the opening of the Sorok Bridge in 2009. Taking into consideration the historical lack of critical engagement with difficult heritage conservation in South Korea, this paper introduces a novel approach to sustainable conservation, using as a case study the Sorok-do island. We collected data using archival research, participant observation and semi-structured in-depth interviews, and analyzed them by using a position-mapping method. This paper examines the island’s multifaceted, shifting processes within its history, urban structure, and changing social meanings, and offers a new set of criteria for long-term strategies that will ensure both tangible and intangible types of conservation resources.

Difficult Heritage and Contact Zones

Difficult Heritage and Contact Zones

Curating the Partition: dissonant heritage and Indian nation building

ABSTRACT The article analyses recent public initiatives to memorialise the establishment of India and Pakistan as postcolonial states in terms of violent partitioning rather than as a successful act of independence from British imperialism. The twin focal points of the article are the Partition Museum in Amritsar and the online 1947 Partition Archive. Both of these subscribe to and further the view that difficult and dissonant heritage holds transformative potential – which is seen as particularly significant in a region marked by conflictual state relations, majoritarian nationalism and extensive communal violence. However, as the article demonstrates, even though the Partition Museum and the 1947 Partition Archive collect and store previously unheard accounts of suffering, migration and rehabilitation as well as disseminate and make these available to the wider public, they fail to bring about a critical re-appraisal of the event, its lasting consequences and nation building as such. Whereas the Partition Museum – through the layout and content of its core exhibition – reproduces standard conceptions and imageries of national belonging and statehood, both initiatives rely on a use of oral history that remains overly committed to accentuating individualised and localised experiences, and to the positing of these as markers of authenticity.

Spóźniony gość w cudzym świecie: konteksty trudnego dziedzictwa

In this article, the author discusses Monika Sznajderman’s reportage Pusty las [The Empty Forest] in the context of Geertz’s blurred genres. The author mainly addresses the condition of a person (a researcher, an anthropologist) who does not explore the Other but is the Other. In Sznajderman’s book, hospitality is a basic category; the researcher studying a difficult heritage — here, the Lemko region — is a guest who must choose either to look at or to ignore the history of his or her hosts. He or she can feel at home or erase all trace of the hosts’ presence. Perhaps in the end, as Maria Stepanova writes, the researcher can “breathe the air of post-memory.” The author treats Sznajderman’s book as an example of anthropological reportage and postulates the emergence of a new genre, on the border between the social sciences and literature.