Virtual Discussion
Counter-Memories: Veka Duncan & Elianna Kan | Mexiko City
The conversation series Counter-Memories investigates a number of international monuments and places of remembrance whose symbolic significance often reveals a great deal about our relationship to history. The Goethe-Institutes in North America, the Goethe Pop Up Kansas City, the Thomas Mann House, and Onassis LA convene artists, activists, and intellectuals for illustrated virtual conversations around historical memory.
Watch the Mexiko City episode about the Tlatelolco district here.
About the Place of Remembrance
In this episode, the art historian Veka Duncan and the translator and author Elianna Kan discuss the Tlatelolco district in Mexico City. After the severe earthquake in 1985, the residents of Tlatelolco erected a sundial on the rubble of the former Nuevo Leon building to commemorate the victims. The history of Mexico City and especially of Tlatelolco resembles a palimpsest: historical events have left their traces, and in turn have been covered over by other events but never completely obliterated. Here, for example, is the archaeological site of the Tlatelolcas, a tribe of the Mexica. Their city was sacked and destroyed by the Spanish conquerors. In recent history Tlatelolco has been, and is still today, an important place for demonstrations and gatherings of social movements, and was particularly shaped by the massacre of students on October 2, 1968. Highlighted against these historical backdrops, community projects and neighborhood initiatives have created places of collective remembrance and commemoration such as community gardens and the sundial. Taking Tlatelolco as its point of departure, the conversation between Veka Duncan and Elianna Kan revolves around collective memory, the appropriation of public space and public remembrance beyond state intervention.
Details
Language: Spanish with English subtitles
Price: Free admission
Part of series Counter-Memories
Presented by Goethe-Institut Mexiko