I Wish You Were Here: The art of displaying a loss

OK, let it be said at once: This post is not a happy piece. It could be blamed on the season, including the beginning of Lent when mortality and vanity is the ever present narrative at least for church attendants, and when my fellow Scandinavians ask themselves and each other (between the sneezing, coughing and winter puking) why on earth they persist in living in this cold, dark and hostile part of the world. However, I will not choose that easy way out. I'd rather surrender to the fact that sometimes even my mind is grim and dull - a fact which probably explains the passion for my research topic, since it turns out to be permeated by death, loss, hopeless longing and nostalgic memories. Or, as crime novelist P D James put it in The Murder Room: 'Museums are about death'.

Skeleton on marble sign kindly reminding the bypassers in Via Giulia that they are mortal. Church of Santa Maria dell'Orazione e Morte, Rome.

Researcher Mark O'Neill argues that theories on death and dying are, in fact, crucial to understand the development of the museum institutions; museums, he says, respond to a need within all humans to plan for our own forthcoming death. Professor Owe Ronström elaborates on Barbara Kirshenblatt-Gimblett when he writes (in my translation from Swedish) that

'All kinds of preservation efforts, all history recycling, all sorts of revival, presuppose and build upon disappearance and death. Remembering is a foreplay to forgetting; for the heritage industry it is not the memory but the oblivion that is central, since it is by forgotten and dead things that heritage is being produced.'

With this perspective, to which I relate in my dissertation, P D James has a point: Museums are, at least among other things, about death. So: what happens when death and oblivion become museum objects and subject to what Barbara Kirshenblatt-Gimblett calls 'the agency of display'?

Putting things on display is an active act of will: By pointing at something as being particularly interesting, the pointer performs a strong act of power - consciously or not. Avant-garde artist Piero Manzoni made this clear in his work 'Socle du Monde'/'Base of the World' (1961), where the seemingly upside-down base is actually putting the whole world on display as a piece of art. Pretentious - or a way to make the artist in the traditional sense obsolete.

In March 2001, the two gigantic standing Buddha statues in Bamiyan Valley in Afghanistan were deliberately destroyed by Taliban, an act that was condemned internationally. After this, the valley was enrolled on UNESCO's World Heritage List. Though it should be made clear that the valley in question houses many other sites of interest as heritage and memory, it is somewhat interesting that the major piece on display - the Buddhas - for obvious reasons are not there. What is on display, and heritagised, is the memory and the void left after the destruction. This display can only be possible if a strong narrative is connected to the emptiness - a narrative constructed by someone, for a reason, and probably with certain spectators or visitors in mind.

One of the Bamiyan Buddhas before destruction...

...and after.

As previously stated, museums can be a way to deal with our own mortality and the temporary nature of this present life as we know it. This interest in death and in things, places and persons long since disappeared and gone - which varies quite dramatically in a global perspective, with different notions of materiality, time and space - seems to be linked to another strong driving force: The wish to replace, re-build, to heal the wounds and fix the broken. To undo what is done, paraphrasing that annoying yet blessed little key (and very philosophically tempting: what if, in real life..? But, alas: No.) on some computer keyboards. Earlier this year, it was revealed that the voids in Bamiyan valley were no longer completely empty, since an unofficial 'restoration' of the monument had been going on for some time. UNESCO intervened and stopped the unauthorized re-building of the sculptures, and debate was high within the heritage world on restoring, replacing, creating access and understanding for visitors, and preserving what was left of the materiality for coming generations. All highly interesting questions, and with - in my opinion - many possible answers.

Another example of death and preservation could be a genre in itself: Trees, Bushes, and Other plants. One of these is standing (though almost not) very near to where I presently stay in Rome and near the Bambin' Gesù hospital, namely the so-called Tasso's Oak. This tree was, according to legend, planted by Italian 16th century poet Torquato Tasso nearby the convent where he came to die. It has since then been subject to romantic paintings and poems, and is now a shell of what must be a very dead tree, but supported by iron beams and brick walls. The image of the remains of this poor tree saddens me a little, and brings forward the aspect of musealisation as a vain attempt to challenge and conquer death. I wonder how Tasso himself, crowned poet laureate and all, would perceive this living-yet-very-dead memory in his honor..?

 Tasso's Oak in Gianocolo Hill, Rome. Or rather: What's left of it.

Continuing the trail of trees and their painful departure and death, I have just started reading a book recommended to me by a friend who understands very well my fascination for displaying voids and nurturing memories of losses. The book by Italian writer Matteo Melchiorre bears the title Requiem per un albero, 'Requiem for a tree', and tells a story - or many stories - about how the removal of a very old tree, an alberón, and the remaining void and memories affect the local North East Italian community. It is a short and beautiful book, and I look forward to immersing myself in it for a while.

The losses and voids are not always physical and visible. However, to produce memory and lasting heritage, some kind of visuality is probably needed. A great example of this, in a terrible context, is the planned national monuments over the victims of extreme-right terrorist shootings in Utøya, Norway, in 2011. 77 persons were killed in the massacre, the most part teenagers attending a political summer camp on Utøya island. The question of how to commemorate this terrible event on behalf of the nation, in a way that can serve as a remembrance for coming generations but also as a place to remember and to mourn the persons who were killed, created a vivid national debate. Finally, an international contest was organised, and Swedish artist Jonas Dahlberg won the competition to design the national memorial. His concept builds upon the perpetrator's having 'left a scar on humanity', which will be illustrated and remembered by cutting a 3,5 meters wide scar in the landscape near the island where the massacre took place.

(Pictures credit to Jonas Dahlberg studio)

The memory production of this deed of horror is highly material: apart from the already mentioned slit in the landscape, the names of the victims will be engraved in the stone wall created in the process. These names will be possible to read from a spectator place, but distant enough not to be reached - near and tactile, yet far away and unreachable. I find this concept most interesting from a memory production and heritagisation point of view.

Returning to the handling of death again, yet another aspect is the urge many of us seem to have, namely to build and correct the memory of ourselves - even while we are still in business and (should be) busy living that precious life. We are encouraged, professionally as well as personally, to mind our personal brand - how are we perceived by others, what is the narrative connected to our persona? A most boring notion of a person, in my opinion, and in desperate lack of respect for human complexity. This desire to design the memory of ourselves has deep roots in our society, though. A beautiful example might be Henry Purcell's interpretation in Dido and Aeneas. When Queen Dido enters the stake in despair after her beloved Aeneas's departure for new adventures (such as founding Rome), Purcell lets her perform an act of memory production in the last grim moments when facing death:

When I am laid, am laid in earth, may my wrongs create

No trouble, no trouble in, in thy breast.

When I am laid, am laid in earth, may my wrongs create

No trouble, no trouble in, in thy breast.

Remember me, remember me, but ah!

Forget my fate.

Even in her last moments, the heroine Queen wishes to control not only her own end, but also the memory of her. Remember me!, she orders, but also: Forget my fate! In its shortness, a brilliant example of memory production, and of the subtle balance between memory and oblivion.

Angel of Grief, Protestant cemetery, Rome

Trying to wrap this up, I find myself thinking that another important - perhaps even crucial - ingredient in heritage production and museums is one connected to death, loss, memory and oblivion, namely: Longing. That force so desperately trying to bridge the gaps of time, space and even of death - how could memory production be possible without it? 

I cannot think of a better way to conclude all this, than with the aid of David Gilmour and Pink Floyd: I wish you were here.

Domesticating the Medusa

 

When working on a long-term creative project such as a PhD, it is fascinating (and also a little scary) to follow the winding trail of one's own thoughts: circling around shifting themes, digging deep in details that might prove useful (or not), drifting away, then drawn in towards the core of the problem again. It is a privilege, and an art to learn and - hopefully - master one day.

Recently, those untamable thoughts of mine have dwelled a lot on Domination and Domestication, and on Control and Power. And, as almost always, an image started it all... This time, it was a blessed moment in the Yerebatan Sarayi, the 6th century "underground palace" in Istanbul, perhaps better known as Justinian's water cistern. 

336 columns, water, fish and coolness: Subterranean Istanbul magic

In the early morning hours of the last day in Istanbul and the ISCH conference, I managed to see this underground kingdom of sweet water, fat fish, stone columns and historical stories and layers literally placed on top of each other. I was amazed by the beauty and the vastness, and by the ingenious idea of a subterranean lake and food supply, accessible through holes in the courtyards of the Byzantine and, later, Ottoman inhabitants in the city.

For those of you who have been there, you know that the typical signs for tourists about Things Of Importance That Must Not Be Missed were there, too - the kind of signs that, I must confess, always make me more curious about what strange and exciting things might dwell in the other direction. This time, however, the notion of Medusa and her petrifying gaze made me actually follow the signs to see the two Antique Medusa stone heads placed as column bases at the far end of the hall. This is what I saw:

Medusa's head, de-charged by not only being used as a column base but also - deliberately - turned upside down. Domination and domestication, hands-on style.

The information signs told me that the two Medusa heads dated from an earlier Classical period, that the reason for why they were used as column bases is a matter of discussion among researchers, but that everyone seem to agree that they were deliberately placed here and in this way, and probably as a way to control and domesticate them. This goes along very well with the ideas in my dissertation project, on heritagisation (in my case, of religion) as an act of control and domestication of the disturbing and dangerous. However, down there, in the cool silence below the busy city and facing the upside down faced domesticated Medusa, yet another dimension of this struggle for power and domination in historiography struck me. Medusa, being the most terrible of three mythological Gorgon sisters, and the one whose mere gaze had the power to petrify any human meeting it, could in fact be a metaphor for the heritagisation process as I perceive it: the beholder (i.e., the museum curator, the heritage bureaucrat, the historian, the tourist guide, etc) has the power - knowing it or not - to petrify living things, environments, immaterial customs etc, and turn them into well preserved heritage with a designed narrative attached to them. 

In Medusa's case, the hero Perseus outsmarted her and cut her head off, and then used it - with its' petrifying powers intact - as a weapon against his enemies before finally giving it to goddess Athena to wear it on her shield (quite a shield..!). In this way, one could say that Medusa's terrible petrification qualities not only worked as harmful, but also in a protective way, to save the hero from harm. Turning to the heritagisation parable, the most frequent arguments and debates in the heritage field are about exactly this: protection, saving, taking aside from the course of time and destruction, and for the sake of memory, humankind and eternity (a little generally put, perhaps, but still). So, using this image to think with, we are dealing with a most powerful process that functions both as a petrifying or even a lethal tool, but simultaneously as a life saver and a protection from time, aging and decay.

This for the Medusa and the petrifying gaze. But what about next layer, the urge to dominate and domesticate this strong power?

The taming of the Beast - recurrent motive in human narratives

The main field of my PhD project, the domestication of religion through heritagisation, is overflowing with motives and drastic actions to dominate and make harmless narratives and beliefs that have come (our were forced) out of fashion. In my Northern territories, the Medieval images are frequent of St. George (Sankt Göran) piercing the dragon - in various contexts representing the Danes or other enemies at the time - or the Norwegian king St. Olav (Sankt Olof), stepping firmly on his enemy's head (which in fact is the head of his heathen brother, in the shape of a half-monster).

St. Olav the Holy stepping on his heathen brother Harald. Tricky thing even for a saint, the Love thine brother...

Here in Rome the cultural layers are, as you know, many and complex - almost like one of my favorite Italian desserts, the Torta Millefoglie: 

Torta Millefoglie, 'Thousand layers' cake'. Divine.

Layer upon layer of history, materiality, narratives - but also of controlling, domesticating, silencing, triumphing, showing who is now in charge. The basilica of San Clemente, one of my favorite churches to visit in Rome, is an example of this multi-layered material history: A Mithras temple, then a Roman house where Christians met secretly, then a 4th century church, then the present Medieval basilica - all excavated and possible to visit. In this case, the perspective of domestication but also of religious and historical continuity is strongly connected to the place: the place itself is a bearer of values and permeated with spiritual charges.

The Mithraic temple below San Clemente's basilica

Returning to Istanbul, and to Hagia Sophia 6th century Cathedral-turned Mosque-turned museum (and now suggested to be turned Mosque again), the need to demonstrate new ideologies and domesticate - though not eradicate or erase - previous ones is more evident. Here, the crosses on the doors and in the mosaics have not been physically removed, but altered to become a non-religious element of decoration.

 

Altered cross on one of the entrance doors, Hagia Sophia, Istanbul

Altered mosaic cross, Hagia Sophia, Istanbul

Given the many and turbulent changes in the history of the city, mirrored in the changing regimes in Hagia Sophia (where the musealisation/heritagisation in 1934 forms an important chapter), it is interesting that so much of the previous layers are still there, and visible. The gigantic signs with Islamic verses is a dominant visual element in the interior of the building, but some Christian mosaics showing Mary and Jesus are also there and well preserved. And beneath the signs, the previous decorations can still be seen:

Cultural and religious layers, and a heritage preserving scaffolding, in Hagia Sophia

So, how to collect these meandering thoughts on domestication, death and preservation? Elaborating just a little more on the Medusa head in Istanbul, could it be that even the petrifying heritagisation process can be overruled - by something living, by a new power and regime? Continuing that line of thought, what will happen to the rapidly and globally increasing number of appointed heritage items and places and immaterial goods: are they really petrified forever, and saved from the ban of time and change, or can they be awakened again..? I have no answers to this, yet, and I hope you forgive me for letting you into this inner chamber of unfinished contemplations and unresolved problems. But please: feel free to contribute in the comment field below if you like!

For now, let's just remain another instant on this mind boggling topic, in the lucid company of Joni Mitchell and Taming the Tiger...

Roman Workday

Yes. I wish this were the regular work look for a Museology researcher in Rome, but, alas: Sweating, no regular motorino driving, sadly no Gregory Peck, and good walking shoes is more like it.

Installed in - at least to a Scandinavian - hot and humid Rome, all children safely arrived as is my research material. Renting an apartment that turned out to be without wifi, we were reminded of how large a part of our lives that is dependent on internet: communication, school, work, banks, information, newspapers, timetables, ticket offices, data storage, and so on. Quite annoying, but we will work it out and try to remember what we used to talk about before smartphones and ipads entered our lives.

Installed also in what will be my work desk until May next year: a table in the beautiful and quiet library of Istituto Svedese di Studi Classici, the Swedish Institute for Classical Studies, in Northern Rome near the Villa Borghese park. Here, the foreign research institutes for art, archaeology, history, architecture, and other humanistic fields are flocking in what was once the outskirts of Rome, but now is regarded as rather central and elegant quarters. The history behind the accumulation of foreign institutes here is quite spectacular; Mussolini decided he wanted foreign states to establish research institutes in Italy, and he offered a piece of land in this Northern part of town to states who promised to build a beautiful and prestigious building and fill it with scientific activity, and also to offer a correspondent piece of land in their respective capitals. The Swedish Institute in Rome was founded in 1925, supported by the Crown Prince Gustav Adolf (later King Gustaf VI Adolf) who had an ardent interest in archaeology. In 1939 the present building in Via Omero, designed by famous Swedish architect Ivar Tengbom, was inaugurated and decorated with furniture and art signed by the most prominent Swedish designers and artists at the time.

Istituto Svedese in Via Omero, 14

Starting out with a classical profile in archaeology and classical studies, the Swedish Institute now has broadened its scope and houses also researchers in Art history, Architecture, Philology, as well as Heritage Studies and other more recently emerged disciplines. Working in this environment means a lot of benefits; first and foremost, a possibility to work in a beautiful and calm environment specially designed for this kind of work, and near the rich sources of historical layers, archives, libraries, buildings, art collections and other such things that make a nerd's eyes sparkle. But also, and not less important, a possibility to meet and talk with a vast range of other researchers from all over the world. In the few days I have been here, I have already met a couple of very good scholars working on journeys to Rome in Premodern time, i.e. with interests quite close to mine - where else would we meet, but here?

Work desk in 1930's design, carrying 2012 computer showing a 17th century diary. A Roman Mille Foglie ('thousand sheets') cake of historical layers.

And then, finally, the magic of authenticity, touching, following the footsteps of... We live very close to the Porta del Popolo, which was the regular entrance to Rome for travelers from the North in 17th century. Though surrounded by cars, motorinos, restaurants, trams and electric light, it is still there. From dusk til dawn and late night, I like to take a walk there just to imagine for a while what it was like to arrive there at different times of the day (as described in the 17th century diaries I study), after what was sometimes a hard journey, and after weeks and months of anticipation - finally there. 

And for me: Finally here.

Porta del Popolo, late 18th century engraving by Giuseppe Vasi

Visualizing the invisible and Bridging the gap

Arch of Titus, Forum Romanum, Rome

(In the declaration for this blog I promised occasional glimpses of the daily ordeals of life in Academia. Here it goes - scroll down if you find it boring. It's okay, I sometimes feel the same listening to myself.) 

During the past week I have been experiencing a slightly worrying level of scatter mindedness, presently of the magnitude where I have to double check that all clothes are on and that it is the work bag, not the garbage, I am carrying before taking off for work. The reason for this - or so I hope, at least - is our imminent move to Rome for a period, and the thousands of big and small details to get sorted before we go: school for the children, care for our half-blind cat, copies of manuscript sources, packing for four persons (weather: Hot? Cold? Rainy?), deciding what small number of toys and children's books to bring, arrange all cloud based computer storages, databases etc so they work together, writing good old paper letters to research funds to requisition money, sending sad aging smart phone on the last journey, replace with new and happier phone, and so on. Like that, night and day, while simultaneously going back and forth to my university in Umeå and preparing the last lectures in Museology on 17th century antiquity politics before I leave. I will make sure to count the children an extra time before boarding the plane, and the rest will just have to work somehow. (End of Ordeals, back to Research.)

The reason for me to start this blog was, as I wrote previously, the PhD course on Digital History where academic blogging is one of the tasks. Another task is to figure out, design and technically develop a digital project related to my thesis, and at best something that actually helps me in my work and can be useful even after the course is finished. Being childishly delighted over technical gadgets and the countless possibilities of the digital development - in particular when applied to the premodern period and sources I work on - I find this task exciting and challenging, and actually also a bit tricky to solve. Why? The focus of my research topic, the heritagisation of sacredness and religion, are processes that are characterized by the fact that they are invisible to the eye; the statue of a saint which was perceived as sacred and an object of worship and devotion yesterday is being transformed into a museum object today, physically exactly the same but with new and completely different sets of narratives connected to it. So, my challenge seems to be: How do I visualize the invisible in an interesting and academically relevant way?

When starting to explore the possibilites offered to historians in the digital world, one finds quite an impressive number of useful, beautifully designed and generally really cool projects (and, needless to say, some less brilliant work as well). Just to give you an idea of the possibilities brought by various visualization projects, take a look at the Mapping Statues project, where you get a visual idea of statues and their placement in Rome on a chronological line. Or the amazing Orbis: The Stanford Geospatial Network Model of the Roman World, where you can calculate the length of time, resources needed and much more for journeys through the historical Roman Empire. Besides the fact that stuff like this give me goosebumps of excitement, I am convinced they add important dimensions to our understanding of theoretical and immaterial processes, events and cultures. Again, it is the use of all our senses and the way they help us learn and understand things, abilities that have been looked down upon and excluded from academic history research for long periods. I believe much potential knowledge and understanding has been missed in this.

As for my dissertation case study with the Swedish Lutheran peregrination travelers to Rome in the 17th century, one of my crucial questions is: How did these young men, coming from a culturally not very developed country (at least not in comparison to Italy at the time) where a heated debate about the dangers of Catholic influences was going on, experience the Catholic objects, habits, rituals, culture etc. when coming to Rome for a brief visit as (what we now call) tourists? My aim is to say something about how they might have reacted to and classified these objects and events - as exotic, sacred, threatening, aestetic, historical, etc. - based on their travel journals or diaries, but also by trying to find out what they saw and how they saw it. 

No matter how well I do my source studies and my background research, I must be aware of the risk of speculating and getting lost in assumptions; there is an inevitable gap between what I know to be true, what I can read and see and touch, and what I assume and guess to be true. I imagine creating visualizations of a lost past offers not only the fantastic thrills and possibilities to find and share new knowledge and understanding, but also a rather severe temptation to jump to conclusions, draw the lines just a little longer and thicker, to fill in the gap instead of minding it. Is this a risk, or am I being over-cautious?

What I am considering as my digital project at the moment, when having given up on the possibilities of visualizing the invisible (well, perhaps not forever, but for now), is a map based digital visualization of a selected few of my diary writers and their movements and primary sightseeings in Rome. The tools I have started to try out for this are Omeka and Neatline, and among the sources I plan to use are diaries, archive records etc related to these travellers. Her is an example from Uppsala University library of what it can look like:

Travel journal of Olof Celsius sr (1670-1756) showing a plan over the Vatican Library

Another type of sources are the guidebooks published all through the 17th century to meet the demands of a growing number of visitors to the Eternal City - pious pilgrims as well as, perhaps, less pious or at least not Catholic travelers interested in culture, art and history. An example of these guidebooks is Le cose marauigliose dell'alma città di Roma, doue si tratta delle chiese, stationi, & reliquie de' corpi santi, che ui sono. by Girolamo Francini and Andrea Palladio. It was printed in Venice in 1625, issued for the twelfth jubilee of the Catholic church, and based on an original edition from 1575.

When I started to think of possible ways to perform this task, I imagined how it would be to actually walk with my travelers through Rome as it looked at the time: no cars, no concrete buildings, no Mussolini streets. Searching the web for inspiration I found that Emory University, US, had done exactly this and launched the project just a couple of weeks earlier. They have made a visualization that can be explored with gaming controls, based on Giovanni Battista Falda's famous map Roma in Prospettiva from 1676, and where even the shifting light of the day can be adjusted. Check out a presentation of the project here. I am hoping to get a possibility to try this model at some point, and to be able to almost literally walk in the footsteps of the travelers I am trailing; to see at least some of what they saw, based on their own accounts, and then add some of that - after all, inevitable - ingredient of magic that is Imagination.

Basilica of Santa Maria in Trastevere, Rome. Added to and altered since the 3rd century, but still there.

Becoming a digital historian

Embarking on yet another new journey - for, yes, there have been a few during my one year as a PhD student and the decision some time before that to re-enter Academia after many years in what is commonly known as Reality. In order to learn more about Digital Humanities, I have been given the assignment to start a research blog. The idea is not strange to me; on the contrary I have been pondering reasons for and against blogging since I started working on my PhD. However, being advised against blogging by some of my colleagues (and for seemingly good reasons: it takes time from my main work, I risk getting my results stolen if I publish them in a blog, etc), and with both good and bad previous experiences of professional blogging, I wanted to be very careful about 'how' and 'why' before committing to regular on-line publishing.

But... Here I am, having started a most thrilling PhD course in Digital History, and being sent out in the world (the physical as well as the digital) with the words: "Go forth and start a blog!". So here we go: "Fiat blog - et blog erat"! After last week's inspiring first days of the Digital History course, and after giving a lecture in Museology about the history of nationalism (a topic that seems to stick to everything connected with heritage, and sometimes also with religion), I now prepare my paper for the ISCH conference in Istanbul starting Wednesday this week. I look very much forward to going, since Istanbul itself is in a way an illustration of my research topic with layers upon layers of re-charged religious identities ending up as heritage and narratives. I will give a report on this when I get back - until then, you are welcome to join me on twitter @helena_w_strom for immediate impressions from the conference.

Apart from this, I am also preparing for a research period of six months in Rome, where I will enjoy the company of my 17th century travelers and follow in their footsteps (and, according to plan, doing some digital visualization of some kind of their meeting with the Eternal City. I'll get back to that). Very much to get in order before leaving, and therefore an even wilder dance of joy at the letterbox when a good old CD arrived today packed with photos of a 17th century diary in manuscript. Each job has its moments of bliss, I suppose, but I feel particularly grateful to be dancing for joy over a digitized manuscript on office hours!