Making Public Pasts: Cultural Dialogue and Negotiation in Public Space

In The Collective Memory, Maurice Halbwachs (1950/1980) asserts there is a close relationship between memory and space, in that memory is not just a matter of consciously lived time but of socially lived space and the collective representation of that space. The city, for Halbwachs, is an image of collective memory. Relationships between individuals and between groups are established with regard to the artefacts of the city. Collective memory could not be maintained and passed on from one generation to the next were it not able to reside in physical objects of remembrance such as spaces of public commemoration. This paper examines the way in which public spaces of commemoration shape a consensual view of the past through the mediation of complex political, personal, cultural and aesthetic forces