Rust and dust: Materiality and the feel of memory at Camp des Milles

Abstract

In this article we explore the potential of state-sponsored memory sites to engender multi-chronological and sensorial accounts of the past, and create new meanings for visitors in doing so. We do so through recounting first hand experiences of the Camp des Milles, a Second World War internment and deportation camp in the south of France, near Aix-en-Provence. Inaugurated in 2012, in addition to being an official lieux de mémoire, Camp des Milles also has an explicit pedagogical function in seeking to raise awareness of racism and anti-semitism, and how to combat it. The article hinges on oral accounts of a visit to the site, and accompanying photographs, which together provide an empirical starting point for a series of linked concepts that frame our arguments. Beginning with Manning's (2015) notion of the 'minor gesture', we build on recent work on more-than-representational approaches to memory and place, and draw in explorations of materiality and industrial ruins. Overall, we call for a more subtle and atmospheric understanding of state-sponsored memory sites, one that attends to the emergent experiences people have in them, that can allows us to understand their affective impact much more clearly, and thus their potential to promulgate and intensify their messages.

New geographies of commemoration

“…Pink, 2007). In a study of the French Second World War lieux de mémoire , the Camp des Milles, video interviewing allowed me and my colleague to linger on a small hand gesture of one research participant, and to explain how this manual movement opened up a rich story that linked childhood memories to the sensory experience of the heritage site (Sumartojo and Graves, 2018). Here, technology made forms of attention possible that were not possible before – without the use of video and its replay, it would have been difficult to notice or reflect on the small rub of fingers and thumb that opened an entirely new way to understand the entanglement of memory with the sensory, affective, discursive and spatial aspects of the site.…”

“…This demands techniques that invite research participants to identify for themselves what is significant in their experience, and to volunteer the terms in which they make sense of their surroundings and what happens in them. In many cases, the most important experiential aspects are entangled across time with memories of other events or people (see Sumartojo and Graves, 2018).…”

“…Since then, a vibrant body of work in geography and beyond focused on the experience of commemoration has emerged, with a growing strand addressing the affective and sensory aspects of official commemorative sites and events. This takes in studies of visits to museums or memorials (Waterton and Dittmer, 2014; Turner and Peters, 2015; Sumartojo and Graves, 2018; Drozdzewski, 2018a; Seal, 2011; McCreanor et al, 2018; Wetherell et al, 2019), the specific affective affordances of digital sensory technologies (Witcomb, 2013; Sumartojo and Graves, 2019; Sear, 2016), and the role of touch and materiality in communicating knowledge of the past (Zhang and Crang, 2016; Freeman et al, 2016). In their book on affective heritage practices, for example, Wetherell, Smith and Campbell (2018: 2) argue that ‘attention to emotion and affect allows us to deepen our understanding of how people develop attachments and commitments to the past, things, beliefs, places, traditions and institutions’.…”

Digital ruins

“…'The middle, memorial section of the museum is dusty, dirty and exposed, with feathers and bird droppings thick in some areas, walls unpainted, windows covered with grime and no heating or cooling in the most open parts of the building. The rusting fittings, walls streaked with damp and derelict interiors nevertheless combine in a sensorialy rich environment, with a very particular aesthetic which is both spooky and haunting' 38 are replaced by a screen interface into an often exceedingly rich, complex and importantly deliberate visual world. Unlike a pigeon nest or the smell of rat urine in a rusting factory, everything in the virtual ruin has been placed there by the creator and, apart from guestbooks (in Twinity, one can sign a guestbook and leave comments), its narrative remains untouched.…”

Feeling through the screen: memory sites, affective entanglements, and digital materialities

“…This includes the large kilns which were turned off during the period of the camp's existence, and where internees slept and socialised. In this section, the site is effectively presented 'as it was', with the implicit invitation to consider how it was experienced by internees, even though the material remains actually reflect its intervening use as a tile factory.Visitors' sensory experiences help link them to previous occupants, for example, though cold temperatures, 'clair-obscur' lighting, the smell and texture of dust, the roughness of the stone, brick and wood building materials, and the overall industrial aesthetic of the building and its fittings (see also Sumartojo & Graves 2018). Up to this point, the visitor has been confronted with the past and its emotional burden.…”