SPATIAL EMBODIMENT OF POWER, POLITICS AND MEMORY

Study of cognitive landscapes intersecting with structures of governmental power and collective behavior. / affiliated with Urbanism and Dictatorship.

The Freedom Square serves as a highly eloquent reminder of altering regimes

depicting the distribution of power. Accumulation of collective experiences such as fascist rallies, communist celebrations, propaganda and demonstrations created an arena (ab)used for display of the political power.

The unsuccessful attempts to repeatedly redefine the denotation and establish new meanings emphasize the persistence of the collective urban memory embedded into space. This explicit example of trying to overcome the burden of the past produces a creative counterforce and bottom-up movements engaging the next generation in co-creation of the public space as an antidote to the imposed regimes of the past and thus creating a new collectively conscious efforts.

Loss of continuity — »milieux de mémoire«

City as a collection of objects and practices allows us to re-collect the past based on the memory that is sculpted into the form. Thus preserving spaces, buildings or monuments is seen as an analogy with the preservation of the human memory. By sustaining of the »milieux de mémoire«, we preserve the human memory. Disruptive moments distorting the continuity and erasing the »milieux« were central to the modernist approach as a notion of shock.

The experience of the modern city was inseparable from this typical unassimilable stimuli. These occurrences were aimed to initiate and establish

new approaches based on disrupting the familiar.

We identify the loss of continuity in different forms — a conflict, a traumatic moment or an economic/political shift, which has a significant influence on the character of the city. The events, figures and monuments lose their relevance, their meaning and position within public space is consequently reshuffled, adapted to the new emerging paradigms or removed and replaced. All of these types of transformation that affect cities are spatial projections of their societies.

Platforms of public consciousness and the new civic sensitivity

In the post-socialist city, to redefine the public space means to deal with the extensive implications to the former regime on all levels. Shaping the sites of historical importance with sensitivity to the symbolic value is a testimony of a new public consciousness. To accept the inscription and constantly attached meanings means to facilitate working out the ethical positions to the past and allowing their emergent interpretation to come through and be realized. Therefore this era is about re-collecting the past, re-creating urban hierarchies and seeking the unifying aspect which is serving as a catalyzer in creation of the new »mindscapes«. Through multitude of collective or individual actions, the conceptual re-positioning is happening, which generates new contents and

programs. The current events serve as an impulse to re-imagine and re-construct one’s own values and substitute the long-term absence for the mindful presence. The constant subordinate position of Slovakia towards the ruling regimes and suppression of the national identity led to the need to re-affirm the national consciousness repeatedly. Due to so much threat possessed to the tangible representation of the identity, the intangible elements have developed in order to persist the hard times. During the periods of the forced regimes or ideologies, these have become sacralized. Culturally speaking, there is a strong reserve of symbolic resources referring to the traditions that experience a great revival nowadays. These discrepancies played an enormous role in re-discovering the mechanisms of the civic behavior, as well as they have boosted the expression of the political attitudes and sharpened the civic sensitivity.

“The period of decay and re-shaping of the sites embodying the memory is an opportunity to find out how the power structure can be re-figured and when is the right time to step into a »new mode«.”

The symbolic value that these physical spaces and objects carry are platforms of public consciousness. Even minor changes or alterations are telling a lot, for they led to big changes in the way how the history was interpreted. The spaces of memory thus holding »genius loci« are not only places of the inscribed history. They are at the same time catalyzing the process of creation of the new inscriptions, interpretations and meanings. Námestie Slobody went through a number of these turning points and one of them happens at this very moment. As the past has shown the durability and permanence of the various regimes and phases to be unfeasible, it is now, yet again, needed to co-create and embrace a brand new imaginary.