In the beginning was the space

[imanfangwarderraum]

Between January 1940 and August 1941, at least 1000 patients of the Feldhof psychiatric hospital in Graz were transferred to the Hartheim castle in upper Austria, where they are believed to have been killed, as part of the Nazi Euthanasia Program. (1) 

In an integral design studio at the Institute of Contemporary Arts - TU Graz, the students were invited to open a “collective investigation and public reflection” on the documentation of this particular historical event. The course which was conducted through winter 2015/16 also aimed at raising broader questions on the notion of public memory and its limits and boundaries. (2)

As an uninvited guest to both the topic and the final classes, I found myself involuntarily dragged into a labyrinth through space and time where I became a permanent part of the historical event, both as a witness and an active agent. 

My un-organized presence at the final revision, acknowledged a possibility of the occurrence of the historical event itself. This possibility was emphasized in our gathering on the evening of Thursday, 14th of January 2016, in a circle, in the cold hall, on the ground floor of the Inffeldgasse 10 building, located on the south eastern fringes of Graz, to discuss the outcomes of the projects developed by the students of the integral design studio. This particular event which is definite in terms of time and spatial coordinates offered a platform, a semi public one, for revising and reflecting on a historical event - or rather a public memory of a series of historical events - which is less definite with distorted features and missing fragments.

The dual impact imposed onto both the memory of the event and myself by the very act of my presence, is in this case, irreversible. The event – the fact that the patients were transferred and killed inside the gas chambers of Hartheim – and its contemporary implications will never be the same as prior to my entrance to its domain. For, I would always mark an addition to the number of witnesses, and I would always be a player in the construction and reconstruction of the event’s public memory (3).

In the meantime, as I confidently adjust the hat of the active agent on my head, I capitulate - this time, willingly - to the force of the free fall into the labyrinth of the event. I scrutinize my relation to a place I’ve never walked inside. I question my current position, the solid ground I’m standing over, which is - and will always be - defined in reference to, among many other things, the static corpses lying on the floor of the gas chamber on the east side of Hartheim’s ground level.

I first look to the event and question how solid is an event if its public memory is always vulnerable to revisions and reconstructions, not only by those who have created and experienced it directly, but also through those foreign intruders who might enter its domain at any given time?

I turn to our recondite archive, trying to find the leads through my labyrinth, but to archive is to minimize, to freeze a moment, to extract something from its social context, reframe it and place it carefully among other frozen moments. More intrinsically, to archive is to politicize, to select, to have the power, the access key, the authority over what remains.

How faithful is an archive to its contents? Or how significant is an archive to the whole list of objects and moments which did not make their way through its gates? Looking at Feldhof, how would the archive, be it missing, recondite or complete, shape my relation to the thousand something patients who were transferred to Hartheim? What additional references would a few rows filled into a book of sheets by the hand of a registrar add to my pursuit?

Short of answers and instinct, will I ever be able to exit the labyrinth?

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(1)  Wiener Zeitung, (2000). Für 1.200 Kranke war "Feldhof" Todesurteil. [online] Available at: http://www.wienerzeitung.at/themen_channel/wissen/mensch/221575_Fuer-1.200-Kranke-war-Feldhof-Todesurteil.html [Accessed 28 Jan. 2016].

(2)  Izk.tugraz.at, (2015). The Recondite Archive: In Search of a Form that Speaks | IZK. [online] Available at: http://izk.tugraz.at/semesters/winter-semester-201516-master-studio/ [Accessed 28 Jan. 2016].

(3)  Casey, E. (2004). Public Memory in Place and Time. In: K. Phillips, ed., Framing Public Memory, 1st ed. Tuscaloosa: The University of Alabama Press.

[imanfangwarderraum]

The war on the traces of the war is part of the traces of the war, hence signals that the war is continuing

Jalal Toufic - Vampires

[imanfangwarderraum]

Where there is ruin, there is hope for treasure

Rumi

[imanfangwarderraum]

Will we one day learn how to live in a place without dwelling in it, so that the act of deserting it would not turn it into a ruin?

Jalal Toufic - Vampires.

[imanfangwarderraum]

Places come into being through spacing, they can be specifically named and are unique. Naming intensifies the symbolic impact of places. Since perception is mostly directed towards social goods and living entities in their arrangement, they are perceived together with the places where they are situated. The place and the situated element are not kept distinct. It is the same with remembering. Objects and people blend with their localization in concrete places to become single elements that are then stored in the memory, and which, in this way, influence the everyday constitution of space.

Martina Loew - The constitution of space

[imanfangwarderraum]

If space is conceptualized as a relational ordering of social goods and living entities, ‘place’ can be redefined and the veil of self-evidence raised. In order to situate oneself or to be situated there have to be places were this can be done. Places are marked through occupation by social goods or people, but do not disappear with the objects. They remain available for occupation by others. A place is hence the goal and result of situating and not – like people and social goods – itself an element situated in the process of spacing. Places come into being through situating, but they are not identical with situating, since places continue to exist for a certain time even without the situated, or merely through the symbolic effect of the situating. The constitution of space therefore systematically generates places, just as places are prerequisite to the coming into being of space. Situating may be a non-recurrent action, but it can also produce fixed formations like buildings or signposts. These formations display a symbolic effect.

Martina Loew - The constitution of Space

[imanfangwarderraum]

If we therefore assume that spaces are constituted through action, it can be concluded that this action, organized in the routines of day-to-day life, repro- duces societal structures, and does so in a recursive process. Hence, societal struc- tures enable space constitutive action which reproduces the very structures that enable it (and constrain other action). This reproduction is organized societally via institutions. Societal structures are anchored in institutions.

Martina Loew - The constitution of space

[imanfangwarderraum]

Clearly, an important part of this process is that spatial awareness we call place. For places not only offer resources of many different kinds (for example, spatial layouts which may allow certain kinds of interaction rather than others) but they also provide cues to memory and behav- iour. In a very real sense, places are a part of the interaction. One thing that does seem to be widely agreed is that place is involved with embodiment. It is difficult to think of places outside the body. Think, for example, of a country walk and place consists not just of eye surveying prospect but also the push and pull of walking up hill and down dale, the sound of birds and the wind in the trees, the touch of wall and branch, the smell of trampled grass and manure. Or think of a walk in the city and place consists not just of eye making contact with other people or advertising signs or buildings but also the sound of traffic noise and conversation, the touch of ticket machine and hand rail, the smell of exhaust fumes and cooking food. Once we start to think of place in this kind of way we also start to take notice of all kinds of things which previously were hidden from us.

Nigel Thrift - The Fundamental Stuff of Human Geography

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As with terms like ‘society’ and ‘nature’, space is not a commonsense external background to human and social action. Rather, it is the outcome of a series of highly problematic temporary settlements that divide and connect things up into different kinds of collectives which are slowly provided with the means which render them durable and sustainable.

Nigel Thrift - The Fundamental Stuff of Human Geography