Collective Forgetting: Permission to Forget
The editorial tracks the dual axis on which the issue rests: remembrance and forgetting. When erasure will never be complete, and forgiveness is not possible, what can collective forgetting offer?
forgetting
Between Forgetting & Remembering
Imagine, dear reader, waking up each day without a memory of those around you. Amir Nassar’s literary navigations meander between the total recall of Borges’s Funes the Memorious and the complete forgetfulness of diving into Lethe, river of the underworld. Is a life where one never forgets worth living?
Endeavors to Forget: Bedouin Resilience and Desert Sustainability Vs the Israeli State’s Contemporary Colonialist Sculpture
Large piles of rubble that remain after acts of destruction and forced displacement appear like temporary, monumental manifestations of “Contemporary Colonialist Sculpture.” They stand out in stark contrast to the lightweight and versatile construction used by the Bedouins, which it seeks to supplant, and as a tangible embodiment of the violent act of erasure and enclosure. The Common View collective learns from the Naqab/Negev Bedouins’ adaptability and resilience towards an alternative, equitable futures.
HeifeKollwitz: A Conversation between Victoria Heifetz and Käthe Kollwitz
Victoria Heifetz argues that in the dialog with Käthe Kollwitz, the artist’s fear of death, bereavement, and nothingness has been forgotten. Is forgetfulness an erasure? Like Kollwitz’s child clutching a mother who struggles with death, Heifetz holds on to herself and her drawings. Still, she says, to rebuild a present and a future, to change – you must let go.
Palestinian Collective Memory: Present-Oriented and Forgotten
For Palestinians living in historic Palestine and for those referred to as "Palestinian refugees," the Nakba (Catastrophe) of 1948 never ended. This memory shapes Palestinian identity, but is it a lack of narrative that has existed for decades? Nour Saed analyzes factors inhibiting Palestinian society from investing in the arts while emphasizing the importance of storytelling and documenting a national experience versus forgetfulness.
Forgotten Lands, Cities, and Homes: Negotiating Locality and Globalism in Turkey
Matt Hanson reviews how, during the summer of 2024, a trio of contemporary art programs in Turkey evoked the passion of historical dispossession, as it has claimed lands, cities, and homes from the Anatolian heartland to the Mesopotamian plain. The critic follows a tension between global art-world tourism that forgets localities and a reclaiming of the right and the freedom to forget by retaining the sovereignty of remembrance to preserve the root of histories and identities.