NEW VISIONS OF THE PAST – TECHNOLOGY AND THE CREATION OF MEMORY SPACE IN SOUTH AFRICAN MUSEUMS
- Publication Type:
- Article
- Issue Date:
- 2007-10-05
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Post-Apartheid South Africa is demanding a revised approach to the construction of museums
and memory space, seeking to identify a new form of museum that assists in reflecting the
history of Apartheid while facilitating community growth and commonality. This paper examines
two differing approaches: The Apartheid Museum in Johannesburg; and The Red Location
Museum near Port Elizabeth. Both museums present evolving solutions to the challenge of
creating meaningful museum space and exemplify how design technology is responding to
emerging questions of how to deal with recent and emotionally raw historical events. The
Apartheid Museum follows the experientially based linear model to create a simulated sense of
history incorporating persuasive architecture with digital technology. In so doing a slick,
international package of the past is produced. In contrast, The Red Museum re-thinks the mode
of construction, materiality and linear narrative tradition in museums to create a new kind of
space, open and flexible, which is situated in the heart of the township it serves. Dignified and
refined, this museum re-positions the past as an entity in the present, acknowledging and
celebrating a uniquely African mode of understanding and conveying history. Both regarded as
highly successful in their own right, the museums identify ways in which new technology can be
applied in the construction of current historical narratives and reveal how technologies can be
redirected to allow for the emergence of new perspectives. In this respect, architecture
contributes to the construction of new political narratives, using space and technology to subtly
convey emotive messages around historical events.
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