nature, memory, humans, responsibility
Memory Landscapes
"When thinking about what those forests were exposed to and what then remained in the “memory” of their thick bark, mighty branches, and the dense network of roots invisible from the ground, I cannot but get back to the endless debate on the definition of memory. In which way does it work? Who (or what) possesses the ability of forming and storing recollections? If nature can remember, what is it that we, humans, can learn from and about it?"
Memory Landscapes is my ongoing multidisciplinary project that combines archival research, museology, visual art, and writing on the vast topic of collective memory manipulation, nostalgia used by current authoritative regimes and/or populists as a tool of propaganda, and the role of museums and memorials at the sites of former concentration camps and places of mass executions in Europe.
But back in 2022, as I came to Berlin as an ICORN Fellow, it certainly did not start with such broad ambitions. The project was conceived in January that year after I visited the memorial in Dachau, Germany, and saw the poplars that were growing there, almost unchanged, since the Nazi times, unlike many other structures demolished after 1945 and then rebuilt - already as a part of the newly made memory site. The inner urge to reflect, contact and interact with the nature of the places of traumatic past brought me to eventually visit 19 of them (in Germany, Austria, Poland, Italy, Lithuania, the Netherlands and Montenegro), collecting information about these countries memorial politics, interviewing activists and - the visual part of the project - taking Instax photos of various natural elements I discovered there: stones, trees trunks, bark, branches, grass, earth, etc.
But back in 2022, as I came to Berlin as an ICORN Fellow, it certainly did not start with such broad ambitions. The project was conceived in January that year after I visited the memorial in Dachau, Germany, and saw the poplars that were growing there, almost unchanged, since the Nazi times, unlike many other structures demolished after 1945 and then rebuilt - already as a part of the newly made memory site. The inner urge to reflect, contact and interact with the nature of the places of traumatic past brought me to eventually visit 19 of them (in Germany, Austria, Poland, Italy, Lithuania, the Netherlands and Montenegro), collecting information about these countries memorial politics, interviewing activists and - the visual part of the project - taking Instax photos of various natural elements I discovered there: stones, trees trunks, bark, branches, grass, earth, etc.
The sites commemorating the Nazism and Bolshevism victims as well as literary and historical narratives around them reflect not only the events themselves but also national myths and ruptures, religious archetypes, and ideological paradigms that have constructed remembrance. The architecture and iconography in these memorials embody specific political and cultural knowledge, crucially shaping future generations’ understanding of those tumultuous times. However, the rise of the far-right movement across Europe, the ascendance of capitalism and war — physical and mental — accompany the spread of amnesia and misremembering, with the promise of ‘never again’ largely unfulfilled.
Visiting memorial camps and recalling the sites of mass executions across Europe, I question temporal and spatial representation of traumatic pasts focusing on the role of nature - as a witness, victim and hostage of violence committed in the 20th century. So far, little has been written about the ecology of memorial sites. Neither is nature frequently granted a memory of its own, whether symbolic or physical. But the neglect of history demands that we rethink anthropocentric memory and put nature — as an agent capable of remembering — into the centre of our reflections. My research aims to learn about and from nature to resist social acceleration, ruinous non-synchronous perception of time as well as memory commodification and instrumentalisation.
Visiting memorial camps and recalling the sites of mass executions across Europe, I question temporal and spatial representation of traumatic pasts focusing on the role of nature - as a witness, victim and hostage of violence committed in the 20th century. So far, little has been written about the ecology of memorial sites. Neither is nature frequently granted a memory of its own, whether symbolic or physical. But the neglect of history demands that we rethink anthropocentric memory and put nature — as an agent capable of remembering — into the centre of our reflections. My research aims to learn about and from nature to resist social acceleration, ruinous non-synchronous perception of time as well as memory commodification and instrumentalisation.
My work, made possible with the support of ICORN/DAAD in 2022-2024 during the exile, was also inspired by memory scholars, researchers of both the Nazi past and counter-memory art activism, memorialists and visual artists, whose names and works I cannot but mention here:
- Pieces of Light: The New Science of Memory, by Charles Fernyhough
- The Memory Code, by Lynne Kelly
- Why We Remember, by Charan Ranganath
- Still Alive: A Holocaust Girlhood Remembered, by Ruth Klüger
- Golden Harvest: Events at the Periphery of the Holocaust, by Jan Tomasz Gross, Irena Grudzińska-Gross
- The Texture of Memory: Holocaust Memorials and Meaning, by James Edward Young
- The Implicated Subject: Beyond Victims and Perpetrators, by Michael Rothberg
- How Fascism Works: The Politics of Us and Them, by Jason F. Stanley
- Searching for Memory: The Brain, the Mind, and the Past, by Daniel L. Schacter
- How I Became a Tree, by Sumana Roy
- Landscape and Memory, by Simon Schama
In 2023, artistic documenation of some of my visits to the memory sites was combined into the eponymous video where the images and recordings I took were merged with quotes from the nature and memory researchers resulting in the stream of reflections, summed up with a glimpse of Auschwitz-Birkenau Memorial - one of the most controversial Nazi-past related memorials in Europe.
In our mind's eye we are accustomed to think of the Holocaust as having no landscape, writes British historian Simon Schama in Landscape and Memory. The first associations one could have in this regard are rather dark - the nature that witnesses human suffering should be emptied of features and color, shrouded in night and fog, blanketed by perpetual winter, collapsed into shades of dawn and grey. And thus it is shocking, as Schama remarks, to realize that many concentration camps actually belong to a brilliant vivid countryside with riverlands, picturesque lakes and avenues of poplar and aspen adorning their edges. [1995; P26]
In the survivors' memoirs, nature was recalled as an element of existential paradox: yes, at times it was peceived as comforting and promising hope, but most often - as indifferent. Seasons will change and flowers will bloom regardless of people's presence, or, as Belarusian scholar Inha Lindarenka argues, in woods the law of the forest operates, according to which nothing leaves, it just gets replaced.
In the survivors' memoirs, nature was recalled as an element of existential paradox: yes, at times it was peceived as comforting and promising hope, but most often - as indifferent. Seasons will change and flowers will bloom regardless of people's presence, or, as Belarusian scholar Inha Lindarenka argues, in woods the law of the forest operates, according to which nothing leaves, it just gets replaced.
Thus, at the next stage of work, I felt the need to introduce more means into the visual chapter of Memory Landscapes, where the collected Instaxes would be interpreted only as one of the elements of people's possible interaction with the tissue of natural surroundings. This is how small closeups of natural elements got incorporated into larger artworks, forming an additional layer for monoprints that borrow from them color and geometric schemes.
Instax photos stood for a personal, immediate and control-free gaze (I also limited the number of shots by 20 for each place I visited), while manually made monoprints suggested the an organic memory-distortion, purely subjective in each narrative we, humans, tell about ourselves and both our and other people's pasts. After all, as Frederic Bartlell wrote in his pioneering research in 1913, Remembering is not the re-excitation of innumerable fixed, lifeless and fragmentary traces. It is an imaginative reconstruction.
Instax photos stood for a personal, immediate and control-free gaze (I also limited the number of shots by 20 for each place I visited), while manually made monoprints suggested the an organic memory-distortion, purely subjective in each narrative we, humans, tell about ourselves and both our and other people's pasts. After all, as Frederic Bartlell wrote in his pioneering research in 1913, Remembering is not the re-excitation of innumerable fixed, lifeless and fragmentary traces. It is an imaginative reconstruction.
Visually, I assumed, the two media would complement each other by providing a tangible and organic aesthetics, with the smooth, instant image of Instax paired with more chaotic, abstracted rough qualities of the monoprint. Conceptually, the combination highlights fragility, malleability, uncertainty of what human memory can actually hold, prioritizing the uncomprehensible, grand, timeless and uncontrollable nature.
And again, sharing with you one more relevant quote, I would like to get back to British philosopher Alain de Botton, who wrote, "here is certain impassivity to human destiny in the natural world. Nature takes us out of that [our desire for status, profit and power] and introduces us to an older, grander, slower, different dimension, which rather than crushing us, help us.
We are longing to be made feel small and insignificant.
And again, sharing with you one more relevant quote, I would like to get back to British philosopher Alain de Botton, who wrote, "here is certain impassivity to human destiny in the natural world. Nature takes us out of that [our desire for status, profit and power] and introduces us to an older, grander, slower, different dimension, which rather than crushing us, help us.
We are longing to be made feel small and insignificant.
In 2022-2025 I had an honor to talk about Memory Landscapes showing my works during lectures, workshops, and exhibitions on a number of wonderful occasions, including:
- Memory Landscapes: Re-Thinking the Nature of Memorial Sites. Subtle Transitions Workshop, Prague, April 5, 2024
- Memory Landscapes: Olga Bubich's Artist Talk. Vilna Belarusian Museum, Vilnius, July 22
- Memory Landscapes: Re-Thinking the Nature of Memorial Sites. History Unit/N-ost, Berlin, October 19, 2024
- 7th Tea Oval: Vocabulary of Memory: Seven Terms for Discussing Art from Belarus with Olga Bubich (moderated by Zoncy Heavenly). The Institute for Endotic Research. Berlin, November 14, 2024
- Archived Ruptures - Ruptured Archives. Collaboration, Intervention, Resistance. Käte Hamburger Research Centre/global dis:connect (group exhibition), Munich, November 28-29, 2024
- Photography, Memory, and Opinions. Lecture-dialogue with Yauhen Attsetski. FSH1Minsk, Warsaw, December 8, 2024
- Memory Landscapes (solo exhibition), Södertörn Library, Stockholm, Sweden, May 8-13, 2025
- Voices of Memory, Prague, July 14-18, 2025, the 9th Annual Memory Studies Association Conference
The next important step of the project was the publication of the book, supported by DAAD Artists-in-Berlin Program. Marking the end of my ICORN Fellowship, the volume collected 13 essays (in English, apart from three - in Russian) most of which were written in 2023-2024 and, at different levels, address the subject of memory. The book also contains the images from the eponymous series as well as the photographs from my family archive and was designed by Belarusian graphic designer and artist Kaciaryna Pikirenia and mediated by Alexandra Meiner. (tobacco, cannabis, etc.).
