We stand before incommensurable trauma: a million pandemic deaths, the collapse of biomes worldwide, reprisals of authoritarian racism and a global crisis of violence, impunity and corruption. We are also self-aware of it all—even awed—discombobulated and unsure of how to face such a legion of challenges. And yet, as we find forms of resistance, the call to remember resonates across all struggles: remember the lost ones, human and non-human, remember their names and remember their faces. Memory has become more than the biological faculty which stores and recalls the past, as it is now commonly wielded as a weapon against political oblivion, a collective prosthetic which holds and heals trauma while it parries recurrence. But how did this widely accepted conception of memory come about and why has it become so important, even a right? When memory solidifies into monument and memorial, is it truly an effective strategy to counter violence present and yet to come? If memorials have a mandate to provide access to a right to memory, how can they better comply to do so?

After the end of the Second World War, nations came together to promise to never again allow the recurrence of global war and genocide. To keep these evils of the past from repeating, avowals took shape through treaties, laws and institutions.1 The institutionalisation of accounts of the violence suffered by victims, particularly of events of genocide, was meant to keep memory alive, in opposition to the effects of letting it die, pertaining to the resurface of unchecked hate. During the iterations of international and local efforts working through different instances of conflict, the imperative to guard and access sources of memory shaped the right to memory.2 We exercise this right when we listen to testimony; when we establish, safeguard and access archives; or when we witness books, photographs, paintings, sculptures, films, songs, among immensely diverse forms of cultural output. Still, there were those who feared these methods could be vulnerable to damage, manipulation and erasure, and therefore oblivion. In response, the seemingly permanent nature of architecture was deployed to build resilient methods to protect access to the right to memory.3 Though engaged since ancient history through monuments, the construction of memorials has noticeably accelerated since the early twentieth century and has now become ubiquitous. Consistent with the accepted rhetoric of memory, memorials are today demanded by governments and their constituents as a go-to solution to fasten memory permanently.4

Unfortunately, memorials and memory have their troubles. Every year, more memorials are planned, built, unveiled, contested and torn down.5 Memory has great power, and there are many who use it to control and oppress rather than to emancipate, especially through monument construction.6 Memorials have become a battlefield, where governments, artists and victims compete to gain control of memory and different visions, values and narratives collide, too often leading to marginalisation, exclusion, denialism and dehumanisation of others.7 Memorials also mirror back our misunderstandings of memory. Many believe memorials are equivalent to truth-telling or are history embodied, but they are something quite different. Though memory changes constantly, depending on when, where, why and to whom we share it, our memorials seem permanent and resistant to change.8 Memorials have also become monumental and expensive, making them accessible to the few who are able to harness enough political and economical power to be supported. This excludes a great diversity and number of victims of human rights violations and their communities, leading memorials to become complicit to further violence by action or omission, rather than actants of healing and reparation.

The Dispersed Memorial (English) from Monument Lab on YouTube. For Spanish, click here. Footage courtesy of Sergio Beltrán-García.

The Dispersed Memorial is a project which responds directly to these challenges by facilitating access to the right to memory. Its main focus aims to cut middlemen which include impenetrable politicians, expensive materials, and complex permissions. The Dispersed Memorial scales down requirements for memorialisation and takes shape as the minimal architectural space possible: a seat where one may sit and be present. It is an economical platform which produces and ships elements that can be easily assembled by those wishing to access their right to memory. Each piece of The Dispersed Memorial is a DIY kit sent to its destination, where communities receive materials needed, instructions, and can build it without professional equipment, tools or knowledge in just a few hours. However, The Dispersed Memorial isn’t just a DIY object. It is also an expanding network of collective testimony, which it safeguards and amplifies.

The Dispersed Memorial seeks paths which bridge online and offline memory activism, in such a way to mobilise memory in juridical, political and cultural forums. Each Dispersed Memorial kit contains a special plaque, a piece of architectural hardware, which runs a digital software that may be read by both people and machine. Through this link, each piece of the Dispersed Memorial is connected to other pieces placed across space and time, weaving together different memories and placing diverse forms of trauma in conversation—and not in competition—with one another.

The Dispersed Memorial, Goethe-Institut Mexiko, 2020. Photos courtesy of Sergio Beltrán-García.

The Dispersed Memorial is a long-term project in three phases. Each phase works towards improving design, functionality, and experience in hopes to make available an accessible and effective open-source platform to individuals and organisations. The first phase is a limited number of prototypes which tests core ideas, working closely with the cv19memorial.org project and communities in Mexico, the United States and Germany to document and connect their experiences of loss during the COVID-19 pandemic. By supporting the memory of the pandemic, The Dispersed Memorial hopes it will learn how to best collaborate with more organizations in the future. This project aims to grow with great care a transcultural network of memorials as spaces where victims can keep memory alive and form a collective archive that activists and artists can mobilise memory of the past to respond to today’s urgent struggles for justice. If you would like to find out more, sign up for news, or participate with the project, please visit https://memorialdisperso.com/eng