Rachel Győrffy (Budapest): Between Iconoclasm and Nostalgia. Reconstructivism in Central and Eastern Europe. Curatorial Practice, Cancel Culture or Museumization? An Approach

The often cited and debated contradictory and yet almost persistent rejection of late modernist built heritage is a peculiar phenomenon and can be found in former Western Europe as well as in the former Soviet states. Differing societies often react with a similar degree of incomprehension and rejection of the late modernist architecture. The reasons for this rejection could however not be more diverse.
First and foremost, these buildings are often perceived as ugly. As well as pointing to a category of aesthetics, this also indicates that the architecture is considered to be unpleasant, or misconceived. This judgment can be understood as a psychological projection, as a kind of defense mechanism, which subconsciously projects undesirable and difficult feelings or characteristics onto other people or objects, thus also onto architecture. One’s own unprocessed, problematic, sometimes even traumatic experience with this past is deposited on the visual as well as the cultural understanding of these buildings. But the disapproval of these architectures cannot be explained solely by traumas in the collective memory. Today’s societies are faced with the task of dealing with a longing for an idealized past, transfiguring and restorative nostalgia (Boym 2001) or historical design (Huse 1997) manifests itself as reconstructivism. These phenomena are reinforced by disturbing tendencies in late capitalism and the unsustainable developments of neoliberal economies.
While the late modern built heritage in Central and Eastern Europe is often spatially marginalized and thus also pushed to the intellectual periphery of society (to the effect that destructions can be seen to provide relief without any controversy), the displacement and removal of this built heritage from the city’s fabric could be taken as society’s self-censorship. Using case studies from Berlin, Budapest, and Skopje, this paper approaches the tendency towards reconstructivism and explores how this trend can be interpreted socio-economically and culturally.