It’s interesting how the exact topic under investigation develops when one does research. I had pretty good idea of how to do work on the politics of architecture, but in the end I ended up focusing on memorials and public art for my Bauhaus Kolleg final presentation. Although I’ve been interested for years on public art and politics of commemoration, it wasn’t really a planned direction. Drawing on the insights of my previous work, the Bauhaus Kolleg gave me an opportunity to carry out a project in public space: I scaled down from architecture to memorials. As the intervention on public memorials in Sibiu was very successful, and wanted to integrate the results of that in my research. The results are mainly on the earlier linked website: euflagmemorial.wordpress.com.
This doesn’t mean that I wouldn’t be interested in and holding knowledge about politics of architecture, and politics of the past in buildings and competing modernisms. One of the things that I have gained this year – or in fact few months – at the Bauhaus is a more insights into this. We all have gained some sort of an intervention, proposal, but also insights for the future. This interdisciplinary environment has opened horizons to some directions at least. Perhaps not to those we expected – but perhaps that’s only good, being able to experience something unexpected and truly new.
We can use these new skills going back to the old and the expected. Even when one wouldn’t not expect it.
The abstracts for the Us and Them conference in Helsinki are laid out in a way that I wouldn’t have done without my experience at the Bauhaus and intensive sessions over Adobe InDesign. Still, I know I’ll never become a designer – laying out simple things is fine, but there’s a great difference between those who really know how to do it and practise regularly and political theorist like me. As youcan see from the linked posters, both on the euflagmemorial page and here.
There is also some sort of a point developing that can be seen from the visuals and the EU memorial website, I hope.
