The monumental space of the Memorial to the Murdered Jews of Europe Cover Image

Monumentalna przestrzeń pomnika Pomordowanych Żydów Europy
The monumental space of the Memorial to the Murdered Jews of Europe

Author(s): Marcin Polak
Subject(s): Social Philosophy, Sociology, Sociology of Art
Published by: Wydawnictwo Uniwersytetu Komisji Edukacji Narodowej w Krakowie
Keywords: Memorial to the Murdered Jews of Europe; monumentality; space; infinity; sublime; desacration; pastiche; Yolocaust

Summary/Abstract: The Memorial to the Murdered Jews of Europe designed by Peter Eisenman is the monumental and sublime arrangement of the urban space in Berlin. As sublime, the space does not yield to profanation recently attempted by the authors of selfie pictures with the monument in the background. These wanna be profanations were critically parodied by Shahak Shapira, Israeli satiric who made series of collages entitled Yolocaust. He cut out from the selfies the figures of amused tourists and carried them on the black and white pictures of mass graves from the Second World War. On a philosophical level, the article makes a distinction between physical, immanent, finite space, where the profanation (ineffective) was played out, and the monumental space which opens up to infinity, the ever-elusive principle of the sublime. The author of the article also describes his own sublime experience of passing through the Berlin monument.

  • Issue Year: 12/2017
  • Issue No: 243
  • Page Range: 102-107
  • Page Count: 6
  • Language: Polish