Remembering and forgetting Emma Goldman in Kaunas
Sara Herczyńska searches for traces of famous anarchist Emma Goldman in the streets of Kaunas and finds light in the dark at the confluence point of two rivers.
Pic 1. Confluence - an alternative, self-conscious memory site dedicated to Goldman
There is no Emma Goldman Street in Kaunas. When walking through the city, one may find out about some of its famous former residents, like L. L. Zamenhof, Ladislas Starevich or Chiune Sugihara. Some of these people have commemorative plaques, others have streets named after them, and some even have museums. However, not all well-known people from Kaunas are commemorated in the urban space. One of the surprisingly absent people is Emma Goldman. This famous anarchist, author of fiery speeches, once called “the most dangerous woman in America”, was born in Kaunas. In her autobiography titled Living my life Goldman recalls a conversation she had with fellow anarchist (and, later, her partner) Alexander Berkman:
“We have much in common, haven’t we?” he remarked. “We even come from the same city. Do you know that Kovno (Kaunas) has given many brave sons to the revolutionary movement? And now perhaps also a brave daughter,” he added. I felt myself turn red. My soul was proud. “I hope I shall not fail when the time comes,” I replied.
Goldman doesn’t have a street in Kaunas and there’s also no commemorative plaque or museum – nor is it possible to know where it would be located, as her Kaunas address is unknown. However, two subtle signs of Goldman's presence have appeared in the city’s space.
Confluence: The Monument to Emma Goldman
Pic 2. The website showing the live translation of Goldman’s famous Living my life
Karolina Freino is a Polish intermedia artist who specialises in site-specific art. In her works she often refers to the theme of memory and forgetting, especially in the context of public space. During the Kaunas Biennial (art festival) in 2017, she installed a large buoy on the river. It had a light which broadcast Goldman's Living my life using the Morse Code alphabet. The live process of translating the book into Morse Code could be traced on a specially prepared website. The viewer could stand on the shore and look at the light, but they could also enter the website and read the book. If more people entered the site, they would all see the letters appear at the same time and read in the same pace. This idea turned the process of reading Goldman’s works into a shared experience.
Pic 3. Freino’s monument works on many levels – aesthetic, technological, philosophical, practical and emotional
Freino’s work is inspired by Goldman, but also by the specific topography of Kaunas. Two rivers, Nemunas and Neris, flow through the city, and the art installation was situated on their confluence. For Freino, this place represents unity and solidarity, which were values crucial for Goldman’s work. As the artist said, Goldman fought for social justice and equality, but also for the right to joy and love. The confluence is also a very beautiful place – a surprising space filled with nature in the middle of the city. The buoy and its light were purple. Together with black, purple is the colour of anarcha-feminism, a movement which shares Goldman’s ideas and her intersectional approach. Freino’s monument works on many levels – aesthetic, technological, philosophical, practical and emotional.
Holocaust scholar James E. Young wrote that artists creating counter-monuments are “[e]thically certain of their duty to remember, but aesthetically sceptical of the assumptions underpinning traditional memorial forms”. Confluence can be seen as a counter-monument – an alternative, self-conscious memory site dedicated to Goldman. Traditional monuments project onto the people and events which they commemorate the present point of view and the ideologies of their creators. “What I wanted to reach is for the monument of Emma Goldman to speak in her own voice”, Freino explains. This is a radical idea – a monument which doesn’t just represent, but speaks with the words of the commemorated person.
It took 24 days for the light to read Living my life. The monument was running during the entire Biennial, which lasted three months, so the book was read in full three times.
Emma Social Centre
Pic 4. The Emma collective has been active since 2016
The Emma Social Centre is located in a beautiful blue building with two balconies. It’s one of quite a few wooden houses still present in Kaunas. This surprising architecture is typical for Lithuania, where around 90% of the buildings constructed before 1940 were built of wood. I made an appointment with Jurgis, a member of the Emma collective, for a tour of the centre. Jurgis explained the history of the house and showed me an old photo of it. As it turns out, the building is more than a hundred years old, and its pre-war owners belonged to the Jewish community. Perhaps the two built-in balconies were originally sukkahs – spaces where religious Jews celebrate Sukkot?
Pic 5. Emma is also a place where you can come to read a book, have a beer, talk to friends and strangers
The Emma collective has been active since 2016. It was formed in a wave of protests against neoliberal changes to the Lithuanian labour code. Emma brings together a variety of communities – the social and queer left, people fighting for redistribution and recognition, trade union activists and feminists interested in the theory of new materialism. Their activities are equally varied. They organised the Kaunas Pride, helped organise unions in local restaurants, published a Guide to Workers’ Rights, and run feminist reading groups. However, Emma is also a place where you can come to read a book, have a beer, talk to friends and strangers.
The Emma collective puts into practice the legacy of its namesake's thought. Would Goldman be happy with their work? In an interview for Kaunas Pilnas Kultūros magazine, Viktorija Kolbešnikova, a member of the collective stated: “I think that Emma would consider the context and would still be glad that her memory is being preserved and that people still care about the topics that were important to her, instead of just having the enemies dancing on her grave”. Her colleague, Agnė Bagdžiūnaitė added: “I don’t know, she also might be critical. After all, that is how leftist politics work – you always find something to criticize and change”.
Sara Herczyńska graduated in culture studies from the University of Warsaw. She is a PhD student in the Section for Anthropology of the Word and a member of the Holocaust Remembrance Research Team in the Institute of Polish Culture. She is part of the Polish editorial board of Global Dialogue magazine and of mała kultura współczesna. Her PhD thesis explores representations of biographies is Polish museums. Alongside her academic work, Sara is a guide at the Zachęta National Gallery of Art.