The Public Sphere: The New Performative Space

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Notes

¹A revised discussion of the relationship between severe trauma and dissociate disorders did not appear until the 1987 publication of the DSM-III-R (“Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders”) http://www.psych.org/MainMenu/Research/DSMIV/History_1/DSMIIIRandDSMIV.aspx.

²Rosler distinguishes between personal as political and personal as social and political by defining the latter as “the consciousness of a larger, collective struggle to bear on questions of personal life” (Robinson 96).

³Memorials link the past to the present and the future. Site specificity is built into memorial design (unless the site is somehow unknown or inaccessible). Kwon references Roslyn Deutches's phrase, the place of “spatial-cultural discourse” as a way of establishing her own framework for site-specific public art: “Informed by critical urban theory, postmodernist criticism in art and architecture, and debates concerning identity politics and the public sphere, the book seeks to reframe site specificity as the cultural mediation of broader social, economic, and political processes that organizes urban life and urban space” (2–3). Although the memorial project is about an historic representation of place, establishing a temporary contemporary memorial in Vienna must take into account the socio-political forces in today's government that impact not only how collective memory is expressed, but also, how the city negotiates new urban projects.

⁴Emphasis on “rupture” has allowed Germans to distance themselves from acts of genocide, viewed generally as an aberration of a highly civilized society. By introducing ideas about “continuity” (aligned with a feminist construct of development), questions can be raised about the breach of relationship exemplified in “civilized” patriarchal societies. For further background information on feminist development, see Gilligan.

⁵“… every particular change will always come under the general categories of remembering and forgetting. Life in its entirety moves in these two currents” (Bretall 26).

⁶After the November Pogrom in 1938, Jews were relocated to cramped “Judenhausen” within a quasi-ghetto in the Leopoldstadt district—houses for Jews to ease deportation roundups (Laqueur 46–49).

⁷Working as an artist in the community resembled my work in the United States, further “normalizing” my relationship to Austria.

⁸The Documentation Centre of Austrian Resistance: http://www.doew.at/english/content.html.

⁹“Vergangenheitsbewältigung” is another term used to describe the process of coming to terms with the past.

¹⁰Likened to Maya Lin's Vietnam Memorial, the Berlin Wall, and Christo's installation “The Gates” in Central Park, the memorial reflects a combination of these different influences.

¹¹“Seventy years after the defeat of the Nazi regime, contemporary artists in Germany still have difficulty separating the monument from its fascist past” (Young 91).

¹²This idea grew out of a discussion with graduate student assistant, Mary Deane, 16 November 2010, at Lesley University, Cambridge, MA.

¹³In a discussion with David Forster about the definition of a victim of National Socialism: “ … What of the lesser ‘organised forms of murder? What about suicides, etc.? What about people who died because of their expulsion from Austria (e.g. someone who died in a bombardment of the Shanghai ghetto?). What about people who died of hunger and disease in the camps? Can someone who was a Nazi (as in: party member) be considered to be a victim of the Nazis due to persecution, e.g. for political reasons/resistance?” From e-mail correspondence with David Forster, historian in the archives of Jewish Community Vienna. on 3 January 2011.

¹⁴By substituting stenciling for “tagging,” an idea introduced by Sydney Ogidan, the project maintains a conceptual link to the graffiti community.

¹⁵While replication and transfer of design expands the original concept, the corporate mentality of “bigger is better” may not apply to memorial practice. Site specificity of time and place is an important consideration, which must be reflected in the design of any new memorial project.

¹⁶It should be noted that while Austrian tagging practices along the Danube Canal reflect a highly personal and generally apolitical tenor, the overall practice of graffiti reads in marked contrast to the totalitarian media campaign sponsored by National Socialism.

¹⁷After the Anscluss, on March 13, 1938, Austria's “annexation into Greater Germany,” the Nuremburg laws went into immediate effect. Deportations to Dachau began as early as April 1st. “Between 1938–1944, 65,459 Austrian Jews, 35.19 percent of the pre-Anschluss Jewish population of Austria met their deaths” (Laqueur 49), largely through deportations to the east. The project is dedicated to assembling an inclusive database that tallies all the numbers of victims representing in the different victim groups.