Entangled Islands of Memory : Actors and Circulations of Site Memorialisation Practice Between the Latin American Southern Cone and Central and Eastern Europe

Abstract

The (re)claiming and memorialisation of sites associated with political violence occurred in the aftermath of dictatorships in both Europe and Latin America. This article examines the circulation of such practices of memorialising sites, including memorial architectural design and museographic approaches within and between the regions of the Southern Cone of Latin America and Central and Eastern Europe. It explores the ways in which various actors circulate memorial architectural practice between so-called peripheries. It analyses circulations at the regional levels and then focuses on the analysis of two on-going memorialisation debates in Croatia and Chile that show fissures to regional memorialisation regimes. The article shows how transnational circulations are not only based on structures of professional networks and global memory and memorial architecture regimes, but often proceed from encounters, individual agencies and trajectories and are complicated by the multidirectionality of memories.