conferences & writing
'Shadow Places: Urban Strategies of Dealing with Painful Pasts'
German Historical Institute Warsaw
Aleje Ujazdowskie 39
00-540 Warsaw, Poland
7-9 March 2019
Paper: Sense from Absence: Creating Emotional Connection in 'Shadow Places'
Cities define themselves through historically acquired self-images. They are the projection screens and creators of social identities – and often come with historical burdens, sometimes even to the point of becoming iconographic condensations of past brutalities. Quite a few cities use these stigmas to their advantage, as “authentic” distinguishing characteristics in the global competition for urban tourism.
The term “shadow place” is a neologism that draws attention to memorialization and touristification as social processes. It designates places that are confronted with a publicly known and labelled historical burden, that are informed by them as spaces of memory, and have become tourist attractions as a result. Shadow places are different from “dark” or “evil” places in that their meaning cannot be solely reduced to terrors of the past; the attribute “shadow” implies positive as well as negative interpretations of the past.
How strongly do historical shadows cling to a place? Is there such a thing as a negative urban memory, an image that is inextricably linked to a certain place due to the willful politics of a city and its PR officers, that becomes a permanent fixture of a city in its self-perception and its perception by others, and that has a formative influence on its character? What role do its inhabitants play in their desire to live an unencumbered life in “their city,” and what effect can political efforts play in replacing or at least counteracting the negative image of a city with positive ones?
The ambivalence of places, their “dissonant heritage” (Ashworth/Turnbridge), and conflicting narratives. Who determines which are the “light” and which are the “dark” chapters of history? What role do shame and pride play in city marketing and regional profiling? How are the “dark” and the “bright” aspects of urban history reconciled with each other? In what way are the dissonances between particular and universal, between local, national and supranational interpretations managed?
The touristic use of historically burdened places is a phenomenon known as “dark tourism”. The concept of “shadow places” goes beyond previous concepts by exploring the reasons for the growing popularity of places with a burdened past while at the same time contextualizing these places in the travel itinerary of tourists and to investigate the role historical authenticity plays in their expectations.
'Memory & Space'
London Arts & Humanities Partnership (LAHP) and the Institute of Modern Languages Research
Senate House
University of London
November 2017
Paper: Sense from Absence: Creating Emotional Connection in ‘Other Spaces'
This student-led interdisciplinary conference on ‘Memory and Space’ sought to widen the traditional understanding of memory through exploration of literal and figurative spaces within this much discussed and diverse topic. The focus of my paper; 'sense from absence: creating emotional connection in ‘other spaces' centered on the memory, psychogeography and hetero-topic features of Chernobyl and why the place plays a vital role in the modern study of memory and our understanding of heritage.