About Victoria Grace Walden

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So far Victoria Grace Walden has created 82 blog entries.

Digital Holocaust Memory – Online Discussion

On Wednesday 15th July 2020, we invited a series of academics who work on digital Holocaust memory in different ways to discuss their research. You can see each of their presentations below: Imogen Dalziel is in the final stages of her PhD at Royal Holloway, University of London, investigating how the Auschwitz-Birkenau State Museum has adapted to the digital museum. Under normal circumstances, she is also part-time Administrator for the Holocaust Research Institute at Royal Holloway; a freelance Educator for the Holocaust Educational Trust; and a volunteer for the Auschwitz-Birkenau State Museum. Over the last academic year, Imogen has also co-taught undergraduate modules on the history of the Holocaust at The University of Birmingham.   https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R0eamOxfcsQ   Professor Caroline Sturdy Colls is a Professor of Conflict Archaeology and Genocide Investigation and Director of the Centre of Archaeology at Staffordshire University. Her research in digital Holocaust memory centres on the role of non-invasive survey techniques in the location, documentation and visualization of Holocaust landscapes. As a field archaeologist, she has completed the first archaeological surveys and 3D visualisations of the former extermination and labour camps in Treblinka (Poland), the sites pertaining to the slave labour programme in Alderney (the Channel [...]

By |2024-11-28T11:22:39+00:0024 July 2020|

Implications of Physical Distancing for Commemoration

Following my previous blog which interrogated the significance of interactivity, virtuality and immersion to digital Holocaust memory, today, I explore another term that is often used to describe the digital - immateriality - and think about it in relation to recent commemorative events during the Covid-19 Pandemic, which of course could only take place online.

By |2024-11-28T11:20:06+00:004 May 2020|

75 Years Later: Digitally Commemorating the Liberation of Bergen-Belsen

75 Years Later: Digitally Commemorating the Liberation of Bergen-Belsen This week - 15th April - was the 75th anniversary of the liberation of Bergen-Belsen. Yet, unlike previous commemorations, the date was marked with online-only rather than physical events at the site. A few years ago, when I was writing my last book Cinematic Intermedialities and Contemporary Holocaust Memory, I went on a research trip to the Gedenkstaette Bergen-Belsen to explore their Here: Space of Memory project, a collaboration with the SPECS Research Group in Barcelona.  The audio-visual installation stood in a box at the Anne-Frank-Platz in the Memorial's ground from October 28th 2012 until February 2014. A short trailer by SPECs shows the original installation here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H1JydZqXOI8&w=560&h=315 The installation's content continues to exist in an augmented-reality (AR) app on i-pads, which visitors can hire at the site. AR technology blends virtual reality (VR) content with images of the lived-world environment. This is particularly effective at Bergen-Belsen because the typhoid outbreak in 1945 meant that the camp's structures had to be destroyed. There are few physical remains of the site - unlike Auschwitz I and other well-visited concentration camp memorials. Photograph of Victoria Grace-Walden engaging with the Here: Spaces of Memory Project on site. [...]

By |2024-11-28T11:21:12+00:0019 April 2020|

What is Virtual Holocaust Memory?

Abstract As more Holocaust memorial and educational organizations engage with digital technologies, the notion of virtual Holocaust memory has come to the fore. However, while this term is generally used simply to describe digital projects, this paper seeks to re-evaluate the specificity of virtuality and its relationship to memory through the thinking of Gilles Deleuze and Henri Bergson in order to consider how both digital and non-digital memory projects related to the Holocaust might be described as drawing attention to the virtuality of memory because they bring us into critical interstitial spaces between multiple layers of pasts and present in embodied ways that encourage us to consciously recognize the movements towards temporal planes which characterize memory. After reviewing the philosophies of Deleuze and Bergson in light of collaborative Holocaust memory, this article considers a range of digital and physical memorials to assess where we might find examples of virtual Holocaust memory today. I propose that we should see the virtual as a methodology – a particular form of memory practice – rather than a medium. Access the full article here.

By |2024-11-12T14:32:43+00:0022 November 2019|
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