Landscape speaks by way of constant change, rooted in process and evolution – the marks of water along a shoreline, seasonal cycles of symbiosis, a forest floor over time. It’s peculiar in that, as Emerson noted, “its self-registration is incessant.” Yet landscape is also particularly receptive—and generative—to our human narratives, individual and collective, and as such can act as a powerful agent of memory. Historian Pierre Nora foregrounds the sensory dimension of memory, defining lieux de memoire as where “memory crystallizes and secretes itself.” Nora also proposes that memory and history are in a constant state of opposition, but that memory can erupt through the frameworks of history when we least expect it.

LA+ MEMORY will explore this power of memory in its many dimensions: physical and metaphysical, personal and collective, embodied and ephemeral. This issue recognizes—and welcomes—that both the concept and act of memory are potent flashpoints in political discourse. Where does memory erupt in these charged times? What can we learn from emergent practices of remembrance and preservation? What can memory held in our environments—on our street corners, in our soils, in our very genetic material—teach us? For this issue of LA+, we invite contributors from a diverse temporal, ideological, and disciplinary spectrum to reflect on the ways in which memory registers in our world today.


Email abstract and short bio to laplus@design.upenn.edu by October 31, 2024. For information on submissions, see www.laplusjournal.com/Submissions.