Paper short abstract:

This paper explores how visual and poetic aspects of bricolage as method can be used in mapping absence. Focusing on the memoryscapes emerging in-between the tangible and the sensed, I analyze how absence is evoked in the temporary constellations memories of the missing assemble.

Paper long abstract:

Reflecting on the ways that absence is evoked in the place through the act of remembrance, this paper outlines the convergence between memory regimes and embodied memory practices in the context of state sanctioned violence. Focusing on hidden and deserted graveyards for the missing, political dissidents victims of state sanctioned violence in the Middle East during the 1980’s, the analysis investigates the notion of absence in relation to the memories of the missing. Being a battlefield of traces left and erased, traces speaking and mute, these sites both encapsulate different and overlapping historical representations of the past, the memory politics articulated through these representations, as well as evoking a space of embodied memories bringing the missing to the fore as presence-absence. Hence the act of remembrance at these sites isn’t only an act of memorialization, but also enacting the memory of the missing as an experience of being missed, an experience of an entirety lacking, embodying a history of absences. In order to map the memoryscapes emerging in-between the tangible and the sensed, and by focusing on the visual and poetic aspects of bricolage as method, this paper investigates how absence is sensed and evoked through the temporary constellations memories assemble in the place.