This paper is about Grūtas, a Lithuanian park museum near Druskininkai featuring recovered Soviet-era artifacts. This study fills the gap in literature on people's emotions and reactions dealing with an unwanted past, and an undesirable heritage. Visits to sites associated with occupation, death and suffering are considered emotionally laden. Data were collected from visitor comment books employing a qualitative content analysis as well as quantitative data analysis techniques such as word frequency and semantic network analysis. Few studies empirically investigated visitor emotions to “unwanted” heritage sites. This research provides insights into the interpretive complex by discussing the content of visitor comment books. Three hundred and seventy-nine visitor comments from Lithuanians to the Grūtas park museum were examined. Results reveal that visitors experience both negative and positive emotions after visiting the site, such as unpleasantness, discomfort, surprise, admiration and delight. This is the first study to examine visitor's emotions and reactions to the Grūtas park museum, a site related to difficult heritage.
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This past summer, three Belgian intellectuals held a conversation for Open about the renewed attention to the 'makeability' of city and society. Moderated by sociologist Pascal Gielen, philosopher Lieven de Cauter, urban designer Michiel Dehaene and sociologist Rudi Laermans discuss such topics as the limits of the manufacturable society and the role of creativity and science in this.
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What is, exactly, an art of the working class today? Art owned by the working class? Made by the working class? Produced in the service of the working class? An art production chain owned by its workers? Art that operates within a working-class aesthetic register? This article gleans perspectives from various thinkers and discourses to build a contemporary understanding of class composition and artistic labor.
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