Participei do Seminário Internacional Histories in Conflict, encontro bienal da European Architecture Historian Network (EAHN), que neste ano aconteceu em Jerusalém. O ponto de partida do encontro era:
“On the 50-year anniversary of the Israeli occupation of East Jerusalem and the contentious unification it legislated, we ask how can historians account for the predicaments of violence and uneven distributions of power in the built environment, particularly in the face of current worldwide geo-political crises?
The conference aimed to open up questions about the purpose of writing histories of urban conflicts. At the heart of the conference was the question of how eruptions of strife shape architectural and urban histories; and reciprocally, how larger architectural and planning processes, along with the histories that register their impact, intervene in the predicament of conflict.”
There I presented the paper Forget to remember: art, activism, and preservation of conflictual sites. This presentation discusses issues related to the preservation of conflictual sites through artistic projects that propose new approaches to history and reflect on traumatic memories. I will argue that the arts participate in the contemporary processes of occupying the public space and formulate alternative policies of preservation of memory. Without trying to celebrate the past, to conciliate it to the present or to redeem it to the future, artists and activists open possibilities for writing the history of conflictual sites.