Innovative Forms
of Memory Culture

Shaping the Past / Gestaltung der Vergangenheit

How does the past take shape, and what happens in the process of coming to terms with the past? What social repercussions are associated with the rooting of history in monuments and memorials? How can those narratives be shifted or upended through alternative, innovative approaches to memorialization?

These questions were at the center of Shaping the Past, a partnership between Monument Lab, the Goethe-Institut, and the German Federal Agency for Civic Education (Bundeszentrale für politische Bildung/bpb).
More on this project

Project Highlights
Memory Map
Perspectives
Our Fellows
Partners

Project Highlights

Exhibition
Shaping the Past

Shaping the Past features work by artists, activists, and collectives from North America and Germany that illuminates ongoing memory interventions, reimagines civil society, and offer reparative models that actively shape the past and our paths forward.

Goethe-Institut Mexiko
The Dispersed Memorial: COVID-19 Prototype and Memorial

The Dispersed Memorial, designed and created by Sergio Beltrán-García and Rodrigo da Silva, proposes a low-cost, modular, and self-constructed memorial that makes use of mixed-reality technologies.

Goethe-Institut Boston
Sound, Space and Remembrance

Scholar and author Louis Chude-Sokei and sound artist Emeka Ogboh consider their sound practices within the context of memorialization and ask how the medium of sound can point to new ways to remember and study all narratives of the past.

Goethe-Institut Los Angeles
Civic Displace

How could Indigenous voices shape L.A.’s Memory Culture? A discussion with Julia Bogany, Pamela Villaseñor and Joel Garcia.

Keith Beauchamp & Patrick Weems discuss memory culture in film

Goethe Pop Up Kansas City
Memory Culture in Film

Keith Beauchamp (Director, The Untold Story of Emmett Louis Till) joins Executive Director of the Emmett Till Interpretive Center, Patrick Weems, for a discussion about memory culture in film.

But as surely as the future becomes the past, the past becomes the future

Ursula K. Le Guin

Counter-Memories

The Counter-Memories conversation series investigates a number of international monuments and places of remembrance whose symbolic significance often reveals a great deal about our relationship to history.

Memory Map

Which questions has Shaping the Past tackled so far? Explore videos, photo galleries, and other documentation of the programs and events that have taken part so far in North America.

All locations:

Perspectives

Historical memory is constantly shaped and reshaped by new interpretations of the past. Explore unique perspectives, nuanced arguments, and an examination of current events by scholars, activists, and the Monument Lab Fellows.

The artist Gunter Demnig at a Stumbling Stone laying ceremony

Stumbling Stones workshop at the Goethe-Institut Amsterdam
Every stone tells a story

With his Stumbling Stones, Gunter Demnig keeps the memory of the victims of National Socialism alive. The first Stumbling Stones workshop outside Germany opened in 2021 – at the Goethe-Institut in Amsterdam. In an interview, the artist explains how this came about.

Field of stone pillars (stelea) with candles

Look at the process, not the outcome
What is Memory Culture?

Germany is often seen as a model for how to confront a nation’s history. However, rather than looking only at the results of Germany’s reckoning with its past, it is more instructive to understand the process that led to the current situation.

An indigenous ceremony to memorialize those who have fought in the resistance and honor the land.

Cultural memories
The Ancestral Memory of Medicinal Plants in Covid-19

2020 Shaping the Past Fellow Thalia Fernández Bustamente writes about the impact Covid-19 has had on indigenous communities in Mexico and the challenges they are currently facing.

Shaping the Past
Turning One's Attention to Knowledge

Each One Teach One (EOTO), a library and community centre in Berlin’s African Quarter, is a space that gives people of African descent the opportunity to transform their past into ideas for the future. Author and curator Michael Götting explains the importance and the history of this special place.

Racism – Marked by a new patriotism: the 2006 World Cup in Germany

Remembrance Politics
The Ambivalence of Coming to Terms with History

Germany and the Germans brought unprecedented suffering to the world during the Nazi era. The way Germany dealt with its past is considered an example of a successful historical reappraisal. But does that really correspond to reality? Social scientist Anna Delius investigates how the two German societies dealt with National Socialism and the Holocaust after 1945.

More Perspectives

Our Fellows

The fellows for Shaping the Past come from Monument Lab's 2019 and 2020 fellowship cohorts and were selected from an applications pool of over 100 memory workers throughout North America and Germany with existing projects using art, activism, history, journalism, and other tools to approach monuments in their communities. Applications were reviewed by a jury representing the fields of art, history, and social engagement, who recommended applicants who demonstrated excellence, innovative processes and projects for public engagement.

In the News

Media reports and events featuring our fellows and partners.

Partners

Shaping the Past is produced in partnership with the Goethe-Institut, Monument Lab, and the Bundeszentrale für politische Bildung (Federal Agency for Civic Education).