Practices of mapping as a strategy of memorialization

The digital mapping practices became a predominant strategy to negotiate social and cultural aspects through space within the framework of memory. On one hand, the use of maps in this sense can be read as an evidence to the difficulty of producing physical memory spaces in relation to political, social, economical and cultural dynamics. On the other hand, when we look from the framework of counter-monument, it can be read as the result of the potentialities behind the digital and interactive spaces which enable more democratic, participatory, open, multicultural processes in contrast to the idea of traditional monuments or museums as places of memory. Thus, it provides a new framework for thinking about physical places and their relation to memory as well as its potentials for participation.

From this perspective, the paper will discuss the relationship between space/place and memory through this new framework put forward by counter-mapping practices as well as counter-monument discourse which inherently connects place, memory and people in new ways. This study opens a discussion through putting forward some mapping cases from Turkey which are conceptualised in this study as strategies of memorialisation. The examined cases were analysed regarding this theoretical framework. Public interviews, project’s websites, news are used to investigate and to reveal the production processes of the maps, the motivation and aims behind the maps, the form of the maps and its ways of representation. As a result, this study revealed the use of mapping as a strategy for - connecting architectural narratives, places and the past as well as personal and collective memory - memorialisation.