The Digital Holocaust Memory Project
More than a decade ago, James E. Young acknowledged a shift that was beginning: from the Holocaust as ‘living memory’ to ‘mediated memory’. It is fair to say that as we face a sad, but impending future without survivors to share their stories that this mediated memory will be predominately a ‘digital Holocaust memory’.
Restrictions imposed on institutions due to the 2020 Covid-19 pandemic forced online major commemorations marking the 75th anniversary of the liberation of the last Nazi concentration camps, and the end of World War II.
Furthermore, as Holocaust museums and archives discover and experiment with emerging technologies, the digital memoryscape expands, enfolding amateur produsers, digital creators, and an increasing force of counter-memory in the forms of neo-Nazism, and Holocaust denial and distortion online.
It is this context that this project wishes to explore. The Digital Holocaust Memory project includes three threads:
- Mapping the digital Holocaust memoryscape, from institutional to amateur projects
- Exploring the ‘newness’ of digital Holocaust memory
- Establishing a network of heritage and archive professionals, academics, amateur and professional media producers, and digital audiences/users to explore potential digital futures for Holocaust memory
You can find out more about the project leader Victoria Grace Walden here
If you are interested in collaborating, do get in touch!
Since April 2021 the site has been published by open access multi-media publishing platform REFRAME, supported by the School of Media, Arts and Humanities, University of Sussex
Plan of Action (Work in Progress)
2020
Establishment of Museums and Memory working group of the Memory Studies Association
Establishment of Digital Holocaust Memory blog and webinar series
Submission of edited collection The Memorial Museum in the Digital Age
Submission of edited collection Digital Holocaust Memory, Research and Education
Submission of article #TogetherAsOne: Online Commemorations during the Covid-19 Pandemic
Funding submissions for a digital archive of 2020 online commemorations, and for field work, network events and participatory workshops
2021
Online network meetings established
Commence work on monograph Digital Holocaust Memory: Hyperconnective Museums and Archives of the future
Creation of commemoration archive (funding permitted)
2022
Fieldwork exploring digital media projects at museum and archive sites
Participatory workshops at various museum and archive sites with local publics
2023
Publication of guidelines report based on participatory workshops
Continuation of interviews and remote walkthroughs
Continuation of monograph development
2024
Submission of monograph Digital Holocaust Memory: Hyperconnective Museums and Archives of the Future