Liucija Vervečkienė (EUROPAST / Vilnius University)
The presentation will focus on the memorial houses/apartments of the Soviet Lithuanian humanitarian elite (primarily writers and poets) as slow memory institutions. It follows the recent public discussion in Lithuania (2024) on their narrativity, functionality and resistance to change. The author applies the slow memory concept (Wüstenberg 2022) and conceptualizes memorial apartments/houses as specific, multi-vocal memory institutions with a potential to reflect on complicities of the previous undemocratic regime in their own particular way. Furthermore, the author discusses the way home museums’ diverse mediality (authentic interiors, personal items, work spaces, balconies and their panoramas, proximity to neighbouring flats and houses) transcend political temporalities and represent complicities the cities witness in a longer run.
Memorial houses/apartments as niche-museums link to a particular location and represent the concept of home (Potvin 2010). They often become subjects to public debate due to both their permanence (Potvin 2010) and performativity (Terry 2015; Vered Vinitzky-Seroussi&Dekel 2019; Hong Lee 2024). Home museums’ resistance to prompt changes, the author claims, also stems from their authentic spatiality and embeddedness in the urban landscape. Home museums (apartments/houses) belong to the natural living habitat of the city and are prone to its own rhythm of development. Houses and apartments of former humanitarian/cultural elites as built spaces mean (Yannow 2014) in a different manner compared to larger national museums where the narratives initially focus on victimhood, heroic resistance, trauma or atrocities (Arnold-de Simine 2013; Sodaro 2018; Pääbo&Pettai 2019; Kőresaar&Joesalu 2021; Čepaitienė 2022; Klumbyte 2023).