Paper Short Abstract:

Monuments and memorials are often associated with durability and even eternity, yet in practice they are often moved around the city, altered and destroyed. These monuments, even if lost for decades, still continue to play a part in urban vernacular memory narratives and local identity. We shall discuss the ruptures between the concept of materiality and virtuality of monuments and the controversies in social media around the monuments' fragility.

Paper Abstract:

Monuments and memorials are often associated with durability and even eternity, yet in practice they are often moved around the city, altered and destroyed. These monuments, even if lost for decades, still continue to play a part in urban vernacular memory narratives, local identity and remain the focal points of vernacular topology. In their turn, the monuments created of unstable material (for example, gypsum or even plastics, like the so-called "PolipropiLenin" monument in Ufa, Bashkiria) are often been objected to and rejected by the locals, but nevertheless also become key to local memory wars. Some of the fragile monuments become central to local urban narratives, and some, especially ones connected to 2 World War memory, are perceived as "inauthentic" and hence a violation of a "social agreement" with ancestors, which in turn is a risk for the whole community. Basing on material turn theories and the "biography of things" approach, we shall discuss the ruptures between the concept of materiality and virtuality of monuments and the controversies around the monuments' actual or potential fragility as they unfold in social media discussions.