This trans-disciplinary research project examines practices of appropriation and reinterpretation of decommissioned antitank barriers. It focuses on their dimensions regarding spatial policy, aesthetics, and the culture of remembrance. A shared access to the field and the exploration of shared practices examines the commonalities and contrasts between art and ethnography.
The ethnographic-artistic research project “Materialized Memories in/of the Landscape” examines the signification practices of different actors that have formed at a number of places around the antitank barriers as a (culture of remembrance) ensemble. The guiding premise of the research is that the meaning of antitank barriers as objects in the landscape of the Swiss Plateau has so far been neglected in analysing remembrance culture and constructions of regional identity. Two somewhat contradictory strands of discourse that developed in the course of the remembrance culture turn in Switzerland in the 1990s form the starting point of our research interest: On the one hand, the myth of the Swiss National Redoubt, the dominant narrative in the post-war period of Switzerland as a neutral and militant, well-fortified nation with a humanitarian tradition was irreversibly undermined. At the same time, the 1995 army reform entailed that military historical structures of the former Alpine Fortress became monuments. This led to an inventory of these structures by Heritage Preservation, and their classification as nationally and regionally important. In this way, they were revaluated as cultural-historical objects precisely at the moment of their deconstruction. This meant the situation became open to interpretation, a productive starting point for artistic work and research, which in turn engaged with the field of politics of history or used the decommissioned bunkers for art projects. In addition, a number of academic research projects were developed in history, social sciences, and cultural studies that positioned themselves in the field of memory research and remembrance culture.
So far, however, the focus of artistic as well as academic research in the context of these fortifications was mainly directed at the bunkers and the Alps as highly symbolic images and spaces of imagination. The role of the antitank barriers on the Swiss Plateau as everyday and rather unpretentious objects often went unnoticed. What are the interpretations different actors attribute to the antitank barriers as visible but everyday artefacts on the surface of the landscape? How did their significance change after the memory culture turn, and what is their influence on current processes of forming a regional identity? In asking these questions, the research project focuses on the aesthetic, spatial policy and (everyday) cultural dimension of these antitank barriers, and on forms of their reutilization and appropriation. It examines how, for instance, political communities and schools, national and cantonal Heritage Preservation, military history associations, nature conservation societies, but also artists, farmers, walkers, and neighbours appropriate the antitank barriers, reutilize them, perceive them or integrate them into the scenery.
With an explorative research design that is characteristic of artistic as well as ethnographic research, the research projects provides initial insights regarding the significance of antitank barriers as memory cultural artefacts on the Swiss Plateau. A shared access to the field is the distinguishing feature in this artistic and ethnographic collaboration. In a cyclic-iterative process, initial results, records, and data are played back into the researched location and discussed with participating actors. This process opens a space for reflection on several levels: First, the temporal distance and translation into media offers involved actors the chance to comment, add to, or retractstatements. Second, the process of the ethnographic and artistic research is played back to the researchers and opens the field for further negotiations or possible conflicts within the memory cultural ensemble. Third, it provides researchers with a basis for self-reflection and makes visible their own involvement in the research project and in knowledge production.
Thus, this project provides a further contribution to the relation of artistic and ethnographic research as a dialogic process, and positions itself within the discourse of research with and through art.