ABSTRACT
In the last decades of the twentieth century, a revolution seemed to sweep art and architecture’s relation to the past. The term “counter-monument,” embodied primarily in European Holocaust memorials, seemed to fittingly describe a more democratic ethos of engaging individuals subjectively rather than authoritatively instilling moral lessons. The postmodern breakdown of historical master narratives encouraged such a changed notion of commemoration. From a twenty-first-century point of view, however, the memorial landscape looks more complex: personal interaction, while still at the center of commemoration, has been reassessed, and is not necessarily seen as the best or only tool to engage humans with their history. Indeed, new epochal concepts, like the Anthropocene, stress that humans live their lives in a world that both impacts and is impacted by their presence: this has resulted in a more inclusive, but also a more sober view of memorials as geographical and ideological landscapes.
