“It happened here!” Digital and shared: Holocaust history in public space

1-2 April 2019 | Location: Vienna Wiesenthal Institute for Holocaust Studies, Vienna, Austria

Deadline for applications: 31 January 2019

Mobile maps and the constant accessibility of information, as well as more experimental technologies like augmented reality, are changing our perception of the present as we move around in our daily life or while we travel. Do these technologies also affect how we consume and understand information about the past in space? This workshop organised by the European Holocaust Research Infrastructure (EHRI) aims to have a fresh look at how Holocaust documentation is made available in the space where the historical events unfolded.

Holocaust history in public space

How can original historical documentation and the rich data sets accumulated by memory institutions and projects support and structure remembrance, education and research in the authentic space where historical events unfolded? Numerous projects which map the events of the Holocaust notwithstanding, the usage of historical information in space outside of a museum or a Gedenkstätte is insufficiently explored, tested and discussed. The workshop organised by EHRI aims to bring together scholars and professionals to present and debate innovative usage of historical information and sources in public space.

The workshop will contribute to a critical exploration of how such digital approaches contribute to the social construction of space: Do such projects contribute to the rethinking of the public space, today often ethnically and culturally homogenised. Does such experience ignite new forms of imagination of such spaces as shared and multi-ethnic, locations where encounters, exchange and enrichment took place as well as spaces of conflict reaching from ethnic and political violence, through expropriation to deportation, incarceration and murder?

We welcome proposals on all aspects of making Holocaust documentation digitally available in the space of the community. We are interested in project presentations discussing the applied methods and gained experience, in particular the interaction of real users with data in space. Which approaches did work and how do users, from students to tourists, react? In the best tradition of learning from each other, we would like to hear what types of documentation, technical approaches or user interfaces didn’t result in the expected response and what can we do to address such failure? We are keen to explore the direct usage of oral history in public space. Papers discussing conceptual and methodological issues and didactic approaches are welcome as well.

The workshop will also include walks through Vienna using available memorial resources.

Abstracts of up to 300 words along with short CV (up to 100 words), under the subject “EHRI: It happened here!”, should be directed until 31 January 2019  to cfp@vwi.ac.at. Applicants will be notified by 10 February 2019.

Image: Expulsions of Jews in the Burgenland (the border region between Austria, Hungary and Czechoslovakia). Source: EHRI Document Blog BeGrenzte Flucht: integrating Austrian and Czechoslovak documentation on 1938 refugees by Wolfgang Schellenbacher.