Modelling Memory: Remembering Differently

As might be expected, the notion of memory (in an institutional context) has varying connotations across different regions, countries and continents. 

In Latin America, memory is often linked to post-dictatorship discourses of mourning. See, for example The Museum of Memory and Human Rights, Chile: http://publichistorycommons.org/the-museum-of-memory-and-human-rights-making-consensus-matter/

See also: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oscar_Niemeyer#Bras.C3.ADlia

Oscar Niemeyer’s design for Brasilia envisaged a thoroughly modern city unencumbererd by the layers of history and constructed on a tabula rasa: an urban utopia that needed no museum. Instead, it alluded to the idea of an invisible history, a mythical past independent of western notions of culture and memory signified by the museum. 

Furthermore, in Spanish speaking countries the word patrimony is used to refer to cultural heritage, which is closer etymologically to the idea of the inheritance of property (or possibly memory), than the intrinsic cultural value implied by heritage.

Other examples (Eastern European context):

 Institute of National Remembrance (Poland) - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Institute_of_National_Remembrance

Platform of European Memory and Conscience: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Platform_of_European_Memory_and_Conscience