Traces of memory between oblivion and resemantization. The cases of The Grande Cretto and the former HM prison Maze
Abstrakt
The present article is aimed at analyzing traces and ruins in their relation to memory, through two case studies, the work of land art by Alberto Burri, the Cretto of Gibellina, Sicily, and the former Long Kesh/Maze prison, Northern Ireland. Both cases are in different ways examples of difficult heritages, where political and social pressures have been deeply influencing the present and future of the sites.
Built for remembering the terrible earthquake which destroyed the old Gibellina, in the Belice valley, the Cretto tried to resist the policies of forced resemantization of the wounded territories, the latter imposing an oblivion of their architecture and the way in which they were inhabited. Even more complicated is the heritage left by the HM Prison Maze, whose destiny remains still uncertain, more than twenty years after its closure.
Caught between the necessity to remember and the desire to forget, the last traces of the former prison cast a bleak shadow on the present of the nation.