Melting Traces

Melting TracesRemembering the victims of Op-eration Whale, Rome 1944.

booklet by

Trojan Horse Team

REcall

Melting Traces booklet

Docs REcall

REcall ConsortiumPOLIMI-Politecnico di Milano - Coordinator - (Italy)AAU-Aalborg University (Denmark)NTUN-Norwegian University of Science and Technology (Norway)UNEW-Newcastle University (United Kingdom)Fasltad Museum, Falstad (Norway)Museo della Resistenza, Turin (Italy)

Associated PartnersErgan FoundationRomsdal museetRoutes AgencySnark

© The Authors: Creative Commons: license CC BY SA 3.0

The views expressed in this doc-ument are the sole responsi-bility of the authors and the European Commission cannot be held re-sponsible for any use which may be made of the information contained therein.

REcall is a research project founded by EC Culture 2007-13 Programme (n. 2012 - 0927 / 001 - 001 CU7 COOP7) focused on the possible roles Museography can play when dealing with Difficult Her-itage such as the ones coming from conflicts and wars. REcall wishes to envision new ways to the handling of Painful Places & Stories going behind any traditional approach: there is the need to shift from the ‘simply’ commemoration attitude to a more active involvement and participation of people in/with Places & Stories, through design strategies of ‘reappropriation’ (www.recall-project.polimi.it).

Melting Tracesbooklet

by Trojan Horse Team

Docs REcall

Table of contents

11 The episode: Operation Whale or the Rastrellamento in the Quadraro

19 Field Research

23 Traces of the Rastrellamento

29 Objectives & Strategies

33 The Project

35 Melting Traces

40 Sketches & Project Images

51 Quotes & References

57 Team Members

63 Bibliography

Quadraro

Operation Whale

Quotes:

falstad workshop book — 11

Preliminaries

The episode: Operation Whale or the Rastrellamento in the Quadraro

After the Armistice of Cassibile signed between Italy and the allies (7th September 1943), Rome was declared “open city”. On the very same day, the Nazis attacked and occupied the city. There were many areas of detention and torture in Rome run by the Nazi-Fascist regime. Fosse Adreatine and Forte Bravetta were two of the sites near Rome where mass killings were perpetrated.

The neighbourhood known today as Quadraro Vecchio was a tradition-ally peasant- and working-class area of Rome. Many of its inhabitants came there as consequence of the renovations being carried by Mussolini in the centre of the city. The relocated citizens were mainly working class, sharing the quarter with peasants and immigrants from the South of Italy and Abruzzo. The quarter gained a reputation as a safe haven based on the self-organization of its inhabitants, despite having no political or institutional power. The civilians in the Quadraro reacted with many small and frequent acts against the Nazi-Fascist military regime. This was a reaction motivated by survival needs more than a political statement, but slowly they became unbearable for the Nazi-Fascist power.

During the occupation, the Quadraro was known as a ‘nido di vespe’ or hornets’ nest, because of the difficulty that the German and Italian troops encountered when trying to keep it under control. The neighbourhood offered thus a certain amount of protection for anyone acting beyond the imposed legality at the time (during our field research a witness at the time mentioned “at the time even thieves felt safe in Quadraro”).

Lieutenant Coroner Herbert Kappler planned what is known as “Oper-ation Whale” (later to be commonly known as the Rastrellamento of the Quadraro) to take control of the neighbourhood, by imprisoning every man alive in the area. The military action began at dawn on April 17th 1944. The Germans surrounded the perimeter of the Quadraro, and slow-ly gathered prisoners at the Cinema Quadraro. Some of them managed to avoid being taken thanks to the priest Gioacchino Rey, who argued that they were too old or too young to work. Approximately 950 men between 16 and 60 years old were then taken from Cinema Quadraro to Cinecittà, in the vicinity of the quarter, and later deported to work in fac-tories in different parts of Germany (as ‘Zwangsarbeiter’ [forced labour] or ‘Fremdarbeiter’ [foreign labour]).

Just until recently war prisoners taken by the German troops during the WWII were not considered war victims. There is subsequently little doc-umentation about ‘Zwangsarbeiter’ or ‘Fremdarbeiter’. Due to the hard conditions in the factories where they had to work (and in certain cases due to the allies’ bombings), many of them died in Germany or never managed to come back to Rome. After the deportation of the Ghetto, this is the largest deportation of Italian civilians to Germany documented during the WWII.

Sources:

Text:

http://www.recall-project.polimi.it/rome-ws-book/#story03.

Zwangsarbeit in Berli 1938-1945. Bräutigam, Helmut; Fürstenberg, Doris; Rod-er, Berndt.

3. Februar 1945. Die Zerstörung Kreuzbergs aus der Luft.Thormann, Dirk.

Herbert Kepler: http://www.http://festivaldistoria.files.wordpress.com/2013/02/155639_10150100135553767_2765603_n.jpg

Passport of Sisto Quaranta: http://http://www.zwangsarbeit-in-niedersachsen.eu/uploads/images/stationen/06-Werk-sausweis-Quaranta-i.jpg

Field Research

18 — falstad workshop book falstad workshop book — 19

Field Research

During the week of 8th September and 15th September, and having al-ready made some previous research (available literature, internet, maps, etc.) we visited the Quadraro Vecchio area. Some interviews were made to locals, among them relatives of the victims of Rastrellamento and neigh-bours from different generations and communities living in the area.

Today the Quadraro Vecchio is a heterogeneous area. Urbanistically it has grown due to social housing projects in the decades after the WWII, and nowadays historic buildings and ruins (like the Aquedotto Felice) coexist alongside small peasant houses, agricultural houses, fields, and the ubiquitous Roman fountains.

A diversity of cultures and generations live here; immigration groups from China, Bangladesh, Morocco, Peru, Romania... have settled in this part of the Italian capital. Next to them there are still “original” inhab-itants (Romans who have lived in the neighbourhood their whole lives), people from different city areas that have moved in, students... The heter-ogeneity of this social lattice was a very important and determining issue when planning an intervention, since it had to speak to many different social and cultural backgrounds, in principle only joined together by the Quadraro itself.

Still today, there is a certain sense of identity among the population of the Quadraro (in their majority working-class). Although the quarter is connected by many metro stations and through Via Tuscolana (there is a constant commuting flow to, and from, Rome), being “from the Quad-raro” still means something specific and particular, different from being a Roman.


Google map: Map made by Iñigo Giner before the visitRome in Sep. 2013. Location of possible interest were located.


Traces of the Rastrllamento

As far as the Rastrellamento goes, the memory of the event is fading rap-idly. The institutionalized attempt towards memorialization, represented by a sculpture depicting a soldier trying to take a man and his wife trying to defend him, hasn’t really managed to keep the event alive, probably because it doesn’t really bear any relationship to the actual inhabitants, and in many ways, it doesn’t bear a relationship to the actual events (for example, why should the sculpture be in the park, that didn’t play any particular role in the event?). There is also an annual bicycle race remem-bering the event, and it has found its way into the regular activities of the quarter. While this has managed to make more of an imprint into the everyday lives of the population in the Quadraro, we distanced ourselves from the event because we found its festive aspect difficult to manage (that is, we thought the festive character would taint the whole event). It is also worth noting that there is no trace left of the Cinema Quad-raro (torn down in the 50’s), and no hint of the role it played during. As a comparison, Amsterdam still retains small sculpture-like remind-ers of some of the places the Nazis chose to gather Jews and different groups. Nevertheless, there still remains a small and ageing social group that transmits the story orally, and that serves as the last possible direct connection between the population of the neighbourhood and the event. The few people there that still recall the events of 1944, though, find very little interest (if any, among the new neighbours) in their stories, since many of the original inhabitants and their descendants have moved out of the Quadraro.

During our stay and research, we witnessed a rather flexible and fluent network of oral communication among different layers and locations of the quarter: for example, on our second day asking around about the Ra-strellamento we found out a woman had already heard there was a group of young men making questions. This oral network seems to be (accord-ing to some neighbours at least), slowly fading away, partly because of the newer, much more diverse demographic composition of the quarter. This is very relevant to our image of the site, because it is probably that very same community spirit that turned it into such a resistant area against the Nazi regime, and the story of the Rastrellamento could perhaps play a role in taking concrete steps towards bringing back that idea of a community surrounding the quarter.

Sources:

Quadraro metro station, Acquedotto Felice, old house, inmigrants that live and work in ilQuadraro: Fotos by Roberto Uribe.


Sources:

Interviews made by Henar Riviere, video Juan carlos Mejia, fotos: Roberto Uribe, Henar Riviere.

26 — falstad workshop book

Objectives and Strategies


Objectives & Strategies

There are many themes and ideas that crystallize around this site, and which we tried to integrate into our intervention.

-Trying to work with an event like the Rastrellamento can’t be approached from a traditional memorialization because of its relatively small impact, specially when placed within a framework of such brutality and mag-nitude as WWII. Intimate, everyday qualities would do more justice to the event than big pedestals . The story of the Rastrellamento isn’t, after all, the story of one man, but of a network of men, and of the conflu-ence of their lives at a given point on a given place. It is a story told by the Quadraro itself. The social network that kept the Nazis at bay had to be a part of the work, which is what lead us to think about an open air installation spread through the whole neighbourhood as a possible presentation form.

-The memory of the Rastrellamento is fading rapidly; as we mentioned above, survivors are scarce and new generations don’t always show a per-sonal interest in the story. We felt the intimacy of the story (being pulled out of your bed at dawn to be taken away), and the underlining of the multiple, individual stories was of particular importance to try and help the different backgrounds present in the neighbourhood relate to the sto-ry. Its (in)humanity, as it were, was what we needed to convey, since it trascends cultural boundaries and thus a very diverse community could still relate to the story. The sheer number (approx. 950) of men being tak-en away conveys more or less immediately what such a numerous absence must have meant to a relatively small community at the time and became thus also a relevant figure for the work.


-The oral network in the Quadraro: as we mentioned above the feeling of community that seemed to strongly characterize the Quadraro has suffered under the demographical diversification of the neighbourhood. We tried to propose a work that would act as an experience shared by the whole of the neighbourhood and thus recreate, albeit briefly, said sense of community, by sharing this event.

-Absence: lastly, the story of the Rastrellamento is a story of removal, of uprooting. What we wanted to underline with our intervention was the creation of 1.000 (as a symbolic number instead of the approximate 950) sudden ruptures in the social lattice of such a small, close community at the time.

Sources:

Scheme of possible strategie made during the Rome workshop in September: Scheme by Juan Carlos Mejía.

Body meassurments (Neufert book), community talking in the park of il Quadraro: Bauenberufslehre, Ernst Neufert, foto Roberto Uribe.

Appropriation of Spacefabrication of place

OralTradition

institutional channels, practices and discourses

bottom-up channels

Institutionsinstitutional channels, practices and discourses(written media, tv and internet, museums, monuments, official commemorations)

TestimoniesStories

(through oral tradition)

il Q

uadr

aro

Qua

drar

o Ve

ccio

-Witnesses- Relatives


The Project:

Melting Shadows


The Project: Melting TracesWe propose for the Quadraro an open-air installation with a clear tem-poral character (lasting approximately one day) that makes the process of disappearance tangible and so metaphorically re-enacts the Rastrel-lamento.

On the night of the 16th of April, and until dawn on the 17th, 1000 ice blocks (50 x 50 x 24) will be placed along streets and sites over the neigh-bourhood, spanning the whole of the Quadraro Vecchio:-Via dell Acquea Felice-Vicolo dell’Acquedotto Felice-Via Lucio Mario Perpetuo-Via Decio Mure-Via dei Levii-Via Tuscolana-Via dei Lentuli-Via del Monte del Grano-Via dei Pisoni-Via dei Corneli-Via dei Juvenci-Via dei Quintili-Piazza dei Tribuni

Inside the blocks the Team will place small, everyday objects, either col-lected from the neighbours in the Quadraro or found there, but in any case with a clear relationship to the day-to-day life in the quarter. The objects serve to underline the individuality of every block (every block will also be catalogued and numbered, from 1 to 1000) while stressing the disruption of the daily routine inflicted by the Rastrellamento.

According to the factories asked in Berlin, the process of production for


such a large amount of blocks would take up to two months, so the blocks would have to be stored in order for them to be ready for the accorded date. The truck transporting the blocks would arrive to the Quadraro Vecchio early in the morning, at approximately the same time Operation Whale began. The installation would be coordinated by different mem-bers of the team according to a previously planned structure (see A1 of the presentation).

All through the day the ice blocks will slowly and inevitably melt (con-sidering the average temperature in April in Rome, we have calculated the blocks would take slightly over a day to melt completely), erasing their own trace in a manner resembling memory processes. Because some of the blocks will be placed forming clusters or groups, and because all of them will be exposed to light and heat in different amounts and times, their homogeneity as objects will rapidly disappear, as they will all melt in different forms and speeds. allowing the piece to develop its own nat-ural process, as happens in the stories that evolve in an organic way from the oral tradition. The installation thus creates a temporary presence, and materializes the process of disappearance that lies at the heart of the Rastrellamento; the experience of the installation breaks into the daily life of the Quadraro and recreates a sense of community for the time of its duration, since it is directed and experienced by all living in the quarter.

The piece is a memorial for each of the anonymous men taken away at the time, and a visual representation of the labyrinth-like construction of social relationships in the quarter. The blocks will leave nothing but pools of water after them, that will be re-integrated into the neighbour-hood.

The project conveys the magnitude of the event by recreating its numerical aspect through-out the neighbourhood, while at the same time de-centralizing its structure to adapt to both the reality of the Quadraro and to be truthful to the memory of the event. Citizens are confronted with a relatively sudden event (an apparition, it could be said) that extends to the whole neighbourhood. The fact that the installation can never be seen completely from a single point of view stresses the idea of diversity, and the many perspectives on the event, underlining the idea that such an event was comprised of many individuals, and can’t be rightfully expressed by reducing them to a single symbolic entity.

Unlike the classical memorialization approach (embodied in this example by the statue in the park), the intervention, because of its temporality, can’t be appropriated by politics or other interest groups; during our field research in the neighbourhood we heard, for exam-ple, that politicians show up every now and then to have their picture taken by the statue of the Rastrellamento, but some actually mistake it with a different statue, also present in the park, which reveals their rather superficial relationship to the event. Our intervention doesn’t allow such a use not only because it erases itself but also because it isn’t thought as a more or less neutral memorial, but as an intense, powerful event momentarily disrupting, and therefore changing, the everyday life of the quarter. The work also offers a counterpoint to the symbolic, abstracting nature of the statue, that reduces the different individuals to a metaphorical subject, whereas we choose to emphasize the number and with it the many individual stories that come together to conform the Rastrellamento.


Sketches & Project Images

Relationship Scheme: Sketch of Iñigo Giner. Create a pice that relates different points of view as much as different locations.


How to represent the absence?: Sketch considering diferent possible sites (market or former Cinema Quadraro location), Roberto Uribe.

How to represent 1000 people?: Sketch considering diferent possibilities how to represent many persons, Juan Carlos Mejía.


How to represent 1000 people?: Sketch considering diferent possibilities how to represent many persons, Juan Carlos Mejía.

Melting Traces Video: Drawings Roberto Uribe


Ice cubes with objects founded in the Quadraro. Photoshop collage.

The large installation in the Quadraro. Model scale 1:200 Propused location for the proyect. Foto collage.


The installation is in itself a performative part crucial in the project. Collage.

Model. Scale 1:200The Intervention on the Via la Tuscolana. Collage.


Quotes, references and others.

“Alles was wir sehen, ist eine Art Tro-ja, eine archäologische Konstellation von langsam bis schnell und von alt bis neu.”

Bryson, Norman. Alleas was wir se-hen, ist eine Art Troja P. 57


Quotes:

“Those who have a memory are able to live in the fragile present moment.

Those who have none don’t live anyewhere”

Guzman, Patricio. Heimweh der Licht (film 2010)

“Diese Grünung der Representation auf Abwesenheit-das Erheben der Abwesenheit zur Vorbedingung dafür, daß das Zeichen überhaupt zu repraesentieren vermag-lässt uns be-wusst werden, dass die Vorstellungvom Zeichen-als-Bezeichnung eine pervertierte Auf-fassung des Zeichenprozess ist. Denn die Bezeichnung verdoppelt lediglich eine bereits vorhandene materielle Präsenz, indem sie ihr einen Namen gibt. Aber das Zeiche-eher eine Funktion der Ab-als der Anwesenheit-ist die Paarung eines Signifikanten mit einem immateriellen Begriff, für den es (wie in der Frege/Russel/Wittgenstein-Konzeption des Eigennamens) nicht unbedingt einen referenten (und somit kein Ding, auf man das Etikett anbringen kann) geben muß”

Kraus Rosalind. Die Originalitaet der Avantgarde und anderen Mythen der Moderne. Im Namen Picassos. P 79

“Indem etwas Materielles zum Sigifikanten wird, verliert es seine “positive Qualitaet” und wird zu einem “Wert”, eine funktionale Verknuepfung zweier distinkter Ordnungen oder Dimensionen”

Material oder Signifikant? Menke, Christoph. P 53


1

2

3

4

References:

54 — falstad workshop book

1. November 6 & 7. Salcedo Doris.

2. Placebo. Gonzalez-Torres, Félix.

3. Sometimes doing Something lead to Nothing. Alÿs, Francias.

4. Sócalo de México. Tunick, Spencer.

5. Minimum Monument. Azevedo, Néle.

6 & 7

Team Members

Iñigo Giner Miranda

Iñigo Giner Miranda is a Spanish composer and musician/performer currently living in Berlin. His work focuses on interdisciplinary ques-tions, both as a composer and as an interpreter, and he regularly col-laborates with visual artists and performance groups (such as IIS Berlin or Yasuhiro Sakamoto). The main themes concerning Giner Miranda’s work deal with the creation of meaning through the superposition of the visual and acoustical levels, and its unveiling by means of deconstructive techniques.

He is co-founder of DieOrdnungDerDinge, an interdisciplinary ensem-ble with which he has toured in Europe presenting concert programmes that blend experimental theatre with music and sound art.

As a composer, he has received commissions from numerous festivals and ensembles (such as Münchener Musiktheater Biennale 2012, QNG Quartet, Adapter Ensemble, Alicante Festival 2011 among others). As a theatre performer, he has worked under directors such as Barbara Frey and Ruedi Häusermann, and performed at venues like Schaupielhaus Zürich, HAU Berlin or Teatro Real Madrid.

Juan Mejía del Valle

Juan has a degree in architecture from Los Andes university in Bogotá and a M.Sc. in European Urban Studies from the Bauhaus-University Weimar. Since 1999 collaborated with different architecture studios in Barcelona, Berlin and Basel and worked as an independent architect. In 1999 he visited the studio of Enric Miralles and assisted the design of relevant international buildings as the Scottish Parlament Building and the Enric Miralles library in Barcelona. He has been project leader for several architectural interventions in listed buildings in Catalonia like the Cork Museum in Palafrugell .

Since 2010, Juan has focused in the field of Urban Studies, making a special emphasis in innovative planning processes for large scale devel-opment projects. He has also participated in critical projects concerning difficult heritage sites like the Gauforum in Weimar. In 2011, he collab-orated with the City Planning Department of the city of Basel in the redevelopment of the port areas in the Dreiländereck tri-national area.

Roberto Uribe Castro

The work of Roberto Uribe consists in site-specific monuments and memorials made in places loaded with painful memories that are neglected or abandoned by society. His interest is focus on the relation-ship between architecture and politics. The projects are the result of an exhaustive and careful research and analysis about the place. For that purpose achieves, city plans, old newspapers, interviews to locals, videos, etc. are consulted in order to unveil the spirit of a place.

The pieces are temporary and because of the nature of the materials they decompose in the time. In this way Uribe’s work performs in the time accepting the fragility of life and the importance to recognize our temporality in this world. More than to redeem the history of he building the actual goal of the pieces is to bring back acknowledgment to what is relevant, the human life.

After years working for Doris Salcedo and Mona Hatoum his work has been influence by a strong political and social engagement. He has been involved in the production and realization of Salcedo’s works such as Untitled (Istanbul Biennale 2003), Shibboleth (Unilever Series Modern Tate, London, 2007) among many others. His participation in Mona Hatoum’s Silver Lining (Bern School of Art 2010) has also deeply left a mark in his practice.

Also his brief experience working as field researcher for urban studies made by Los Andes University (1998-1999) and as external adviser for the DAPD in Bogotá during the elaboration of the POT in (2000-2001), has been of great importance in his understanding of the relationship between Politics and the public space.

Horacio González Cesteros (External Adviser)

Horacio González Cesteros is Postgraduate in History and Geography and Master of Classical Archaeology. Actually is researching for his PhD at the Catalan Archaeological Institute and the Berlin Academy of Sciences thanks to different European fellowships and postgraduate con-tracts. His main topic is the study of ancient economy through archaeo-logical evidences on the Rhine area, with special attention to pottery and amphorae.

In addition to his main research, he is involved in different internation-al archaeological projects around Europe and different countries on the Mediterranean basin. Since 2010 he is part of the archaeological team in the ancient metropolis of Ephesus, where he is involved in the study of the huge local amphorae production and even huger importations, with special emphasis to their distribution in different context and places in Ephesus and his territory.

He is also collaborating in the archaeological studies of the Brioni island (Istria, Croatia), searching for the economic implications of the different villa placed on this small island and their link with the inland territory.

Henar Rivière Ríos (External Adviser)

Postgraduate in Contemporary Art History and Theory and Master of Art History with “Summa cum Laude”, is researching for her PhD at the Freie Universität Berlin and the Universidad Complutense de Ma-drid thanks to different European fellowships and focusing on the in-ternational network of artists Fluxus, whose activity began in 1962. She co-curated the exibition “The lunatics are on the loose…” EUROPEAN FLUXUS FESTIVALS 1962-1977, and extensively contributed to the homonymous book.

Complementary to her main research on this topic, she is also working on the new artistic practices and hybrid media developed in and around Fluxus from the end of the 1950s onwards, which were pioneering the performance, conceptual and sound art in a broad sense. Within this field of interest she devotes special attention to the Spanish group Zaj – close-ly linked with Fluxus.

Her methodological approach to Fluxus, Zaj and her broader field of research includes art historiography and criticism, besides the aesthetic and historical analyses. She is especially interested in the challenge posed to the historiography of art by the artistic practice of performance: being ephemeral art, the performances of the 1960s can be approached only indirectly, through the documents and the memories of the artists and attendees. In this way, performance art raises the question of memory, and disintegrates the one-piece discourse of the history of Western art, opening it to a myriad of narratives, a floating field where the distinction between mythology and history seems to blur.


Bibliography

Dialogues in Public Art. Finkelpearl, Tom.

Zwangsarbeit in Berlin 1938-1945. Bräutigam, Helmut, Fürstenberg, Doris; Roder, Bernt.

3. Februar 1945. Dies Zerstörung Kreuzberg aus der Luft. Thomas, Dirk.

Arqueología. Teorías, Métodos y Práctica. Renfrew, Colin; Bahn, Paul.

Städtebau für Mussolini. Auf dem weg zu einem neuen Rom. Bodens-chatz, Harald.

Bunker Archeology. Virilio, Paul.

Wilde Archäologien. Ebeling, Knut.

Félix González-Torres. Ault, Julie.

REcall docs – Rome workshop book

Published by Politecnico di Milano, DAStU

© The Authors: Creative Commons: license CC BY SA 3.0

REcall is a research project funded by EC Cluture 2007-13 Programme (n. 2012 - 0927 / 001 - 001 CU7 COOP7)

REcall

Melting Traces

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