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“Can a Non-Extant District be a Heritage Place?”

CAS 20/01/2013

The Centre for Advanced Study Sofia is pleased to invite you to the lecture

“Can a Non-Extant District be a Heritage Place?”
(in English)

Delivered by

Dr. Ewa Klekot
University of Warsaw, Institute of Ethnology and Cultural Anthropology, Warsaw, Poland

The event will take place at the CAS conference hall
on 25 February 2013 (Monday) at 17:30h on 7B, Stefan Karadja Str. Sofia


Two central districts of Warsaw, Muranów and Mirów, are home to buildings constructed after WWII, when in several stages (late 1940s to early 1970s) the area of the former Ghetto of Warsaw (existing in 1940-1943) was rebuilt. During the over 40 years following the war, there were very few material expressions of memory of the events that had taken place there during WWII, or of the inhabitants of the Northern District of the pre-WWII Warsaw. However, the last two decades witnessed a proliferation of commemoration activities, taking both immaterial and material form. As Dr. Klekot’s main interest is in the ways material heritage is constituted (or 'heritagization' of sites and architecture), she would focus on material interventions in the space of both districts (different kind of monuments and commemorations plus Museum of History of Polish Jews under construction). She will reflect on oblivion and memory of the Warsaw Jewish past, the heritagization process going on in two districts, as well as its main actors and their relationship to local inhabitants. What distinguishes this process is the fact that, what is turned into ‘heritage’, are not the existing buildings, but rather the empty space left by the non-existing ones.

Dr. Ewa Klekot is an anthropologist and a translator. Main research area: anthropology of art, especially art's powers of distinction in Modernity (kitsch, historical heritage monuments), as well as materiality of objects considered art. She is interested in interdisciplinary approach to materiality, its meanings and social practices of their creation, especially the ones that incite humans to desire, own and collect things, venerate them, react emotionally to them, etc.; Author of numerous translations in the area of anthropology and cultural history.


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