SURFACE & EVENT
PART II – manipulating memory
We need to save things in order to remember to avoid the mistakes of the past and to be proud about what we achieved previously. Saving things makes us live again in our mind something that will never return.
1.
All these monuments are remains of the most important eras of the history of Thessaloniki. There are there to reminds us of our story and where we are coming from.
During my studies in the Department of Architects’ Engineers, I attended mandatory restoration courses that taught us how to keep alive the monuments of the past. This is something that happens when you give a new use to an old monument so as to make a dialogue with the present. By means, that you shift something to useful, to something
2.The hippodrome at the Roman agora in Thessaloniki.
that answers to the needs of the present.Below, are sitted the points that I would like to discuss with you during the class…
Poverty is a wonderful preservative of the past. It may let restoration wait as it ought not to wait, but it will keep old things as they are…the living occupy the past. Jonathan Daniels
How distant the past must be to become valuable? Kevin Lynch
3.
Time collage: over time, houses become pastiches.
Distinction between history and memory. History is the science of learning about the past, while memory is personal, can create art and it is not being taught from anybody. Memory lives alive in our mind.
While monuments are often sterile pronouncements of the obligation to honor a truly dead past that occupies only a static place in the ongoing present, they can also recall the dead in order to make the survivors responsible to the living.
4.
Is it more important to preserve the sites of pleasure or pain?
5.Street in Thessaloniki ‘s Old Town Ano Poli (remains from the latest Ottoman era)
PART III – down to earth: Land use
Pollution has no boundaries and it doesn’t settle in one place. Johnson
2 comments:
“Why we save things and what should be saved?” Kevin Lynch
This quote by Lynch can be found in the first chapter “In Mothballs” where Lippard discusses present vs. past, how we deal with it, and how we connect or separate those two. It was interesting to read that they are not as separate as one might think. Many people dwell on the past and have a hard time going forward, progressing and not denying the present. Lippard mentions nostalgia as one way of refusing the present. I wonder how valuable or effective it might be for our current or even future way of living. I am not pro abandoning or not cherishing the past but sometimes I wonder why we carry so much for material objects from the past when we can be more useful by concentrating on present, non-material issues, such as ecology, environment, etc.
There was another interesting question raised by Kevin Lynch: “How distant the past must be to become valuable?” There has always been a fascination with antiques and of course, the older the better. I think the problem is that predominantly, only a few “important” people get to decide what is valuable. I think this is applicable for almost any field: art, fashion, history, etc.
Lippard states that "one reason to know our own histories is so that we are not defined by others ..." This is why we might save "things," be they clothing, photographs, toys, etc. Things provide us with information by which to build our histories and thus retain a sense of our selves and our culture. We also save information about past places and events through stories that can be passed to future generations. In the process of passing down history, history becomes, as Lippard says, in part subjective. Just like memory, history can transform in the recalling of it. Bits and pieces are inadvertently (and perhaps sometimes purposefully) forgotten, left out or added. The details of history may even be changed by who is doing the remembering.
Lippard's discussion of monuments made me think differently about them--that they are perhaps not as special or important as they are made out to be. The Native Americans seem to have a purer, more honest way to honor the past--by letting the land itself represent historical events--as Lippard says, "to those who care." I really appreciate the notion that "...absence can be more powerfully evoked than presence."
I agree that one of Lippard's most provocative statements is "...how we understand space is affected by how we understand time." She also says that "Those cultures with ways to comprehend greater expanses of time also incorporate greater expanses of space." For example, the native North Americans respect and value past traditions and are thus less interested in the material representations of the past while Euro-Americans (not normally so involved with the past) crave and collect them.
As a dancer, the concepts of time and space are of great interest to me. Therefore I would like to bring up an interesting statement of Foucault's: "... I believe that the anxiety of our era has to do fundamentally with space, no doubt a great deal more than with time. Time probably appears to us only as one of the various distributive operations that are possible for the elements that are spread out in space." I do not know exactly what Foucault means by this, or if I believe it; but I would like to think about it some more and also try to relate his statement to Lippard's ideas of space and time. Stay tuned.
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