Spatial Creativity as a Method: Resounding Lidice, Sacralization of Silence and Gendered Representations of Trauma at the Lidice Memorial
Spatial Creativity as a Method: Resounding Lidice, Sacralization of Silence and Gendered Representations of Trauma at the Lidice Memorial

Summary/Abstract: After forty years of Communist control of collective memory in public space, in the decades since 1989 all post-socialist countries have witnessed intensive institutional efforts to either reinterpret and resignify existing monuments and memorials of the recent past or build entirely new memorial landscapes. These official projects have exhibited varying degrees of continuity and change in the spatial and gendered constructions of heroism, victimhood, and perpetration, as well as notions of national belonging and collective inclusion/exclusion. As space has been used as a major narrative medium of official, national histories of Nazism and Communism, accordingly, spatial creativity has emerged as a corresponding reaction by diverse actors to express disagreement, outrage, solidarity, or alternative versions of the recent past. The article analyzes one such example of spatial creativity in the post-socialist landscape of the Czech Republic, the spatial audiodrama project Resounding Lidice. Through this case study, the article examines spatial creativity as a stimulating concept to broaden our understanding of post-socialist dealings with the recent past of violence and trauma. The article explores three central questions: How can creativity contribute to democratization of commemorative practices? How can we break the cult of death and reverential silence that often dominate memorial landscapes? How can we support a complex treatment of gender at memorial sites? The article argues that spatial creativity can function as a method to challenge hegemonical commemorative practices; as a form of collective activism, reconciliation, and intergenerational dialogue; and as an opportunity to transcend conventional gendered constructions of collective memory.

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