The National Covid Memorial Wall in London commemorates the victims of Covid in many different languages and scripts.
Traces are linguistic events documented through their relationships to tangible objects, monuments or places, whose memory echoes through those material hosts and geographies.
Appearing in written language in the form of inscriptions and graffiti or in oral traditions, such as toponyms, language Traces illustrate the deep and layered relationship between tangible objects and their intangible significance – representing, in essence, the linguistic dimension of place and material culture.
Traces allow us to build an archaeology of languages attached to objects and geography, past and present. Since Traces are diffused throughout European territory, they form our Diffuseum, a virtual territorial expansion of our museum space.
We classify TRACES in 3 broad categories, which are in turn divided into further sub-categories:
- Oral traditions – oral events and traditions deeply associated with sites and objects, such as:
- Toponyms
- Legends
- Songs
- Speaking objects
- Graffiti –writings on walls or objects of an informal and casual character, typically not commissioned by persons with authority over the site or object
- Inscriptions – texts inscribed or painted on hard surfaces on sites, walls or objects (stone, metal, glass, wood, etc.) or woven, sown or painted on cloth, of a formal nature, usually commissioned by someone with authority over the site or object. :
- Inscriptions on monuments
- Funerary Inscriptions
- Votive/sacred inscriptions
- Public notices
- Captions in art
- Artists’ signatures
CONTRIBUTE YOUR TRACE
You too can contribute to the data collection. We accept contributions in doc or excel format: download the template here