Granted, visiting the virtual museum from the comfort of your living room doesn’t seem like a social event. And when seeing photographs of the eternal flame surrounded by walls of flowers, being honored by a large commemoration ceremony involving many prominent Armenians, it is hard to imagine that any virtual space could ever have such a social relevance.

Nevertheless, I argue that it is a socially relevant space – or it least it can be.

Virtually remediated space doesn’t limit the social impact of Tsitsernakaberd because it is ‘just an online space’. It is not ‘just’ a 3D rendering on the flat surface of a computer screen. To an equal degree as the physical remediation of the Armenian genocide at the Tsitsernakaberd memorial, it can be a symbol and a medium through which collective memories are conveyed.

Imagine people calling each other from the privacy of their own homes, asking to ‘meet’ online in the virtual museum. Even if they wouldn’t be able to ‘see’ or ‘hear’ each other online, simply knowing that the experience of ‘visiting’ the memorial is a shared experience can add a layer of meaning to the endeavor. What is more, it could possibly make the experience even more intense by adding the possibility of customization of the visiting experience. This – so we can imagine – can be a collective (e.g. “let’s both play this-and-that song and pray at the eternal flame”), individual (e.g. both individuals playing their favorite music in the background, and one looks at the museum and the other at the eternal flame), or ‘hybrid’ (e.g. both listen to different music, but go to the same place) customization of the visiting experience.

Moreover, the virtual museum should not be seen as an alternative to the physical site; it is an addition to it. As Grosz (2001) also mentions, virtual spaces are intertwined with physical spaces and both social spheres can influence each other. It would not come as a surprise if website statistics indicate that the virtual museum attracts significantly more visitors on the 24^th of April (see Inge’s post), even though the online remediation is not bounded by date or time. In such a case, the virtual acts is an extension of the physical. The virtual museum can thereby reinforce the shared feeling in physical space, as members of the Armenian Diaspora can join in on the commemorations (e.g. on the 24^th) acted out in physical space.

Conversely, the physical Tsitsernakeberd memorial may attract more international visitors as a result of its online presence. Also, as the virtual museum is accessible regardless of geography, and its symbolism and presentation of historical events is far from neutral, it could potentially become a political symbol in virtual as well as physical space.

To further add to Inge’s comment on Nora (1989) in the final lines of her post on collective remembering, the virtual Tsitsernakaberd memorial complex is (potentially) as much a lieux de mémoire as the physical space itself. And not only does it extend collective memories through time and into public space – it extends collective memories through geography and political relations, simultaneously making it a potent political symbol and statement.

To conclude, the virtual museum as a medium can have a much greater potential than it currently displays. Consider, for example, the social interactions people engage in on social networking sites (such as Facebook, Myspace, and Twitter), or – even closer to the virtual museum experience – web communities such as Second Life, or ‘Massively Multiplayer’ online games such as World of Warcraft. In all of these ‘web 2.0‘ applications, individuals engage in social networks with other ‘real’ individuals. They share experiences, thoughts, ideas, feelings, and discuss major life events. Such a framework for social interaction, I believe, might be the next step in remediating collective memories in on- and offline Tsitsernakaberd.

By every step further up the hill, it feels as if we are leaving civilization behind us. No houses, no people, just bushes. But the museum has to be somewhere around here and we continue our climb. Finally, the 44 meter high pillar of the memorial complex arises above the horizon. We have reached our goal.

But as soon as we have a closer look at the scene on top of this hill, it is not just the buildings that attract our attention. People stroll around in groups. The atmosphere is gloomy. A teenage girl bursts into tears. Her friends support her, but her tears keep falling. It is obvious that these people share her sorrows. But what are they so upset about? For sure these people are too young to have experienced the Armenian genocide themselves (or their (grand)parents, for that matter). Why do they feel so involved? When we enter the genocide memorial we can better understand why. The Armenian genocide is not a personal memory; it is passed on within families, schools and other public areas. It is a shared memory.

Maurice Halbwachs (in Coser, 1992, p. 22) was the first to address the distinction between personal and collective memories. He argued that although it is individuals who remember, they remember and recreate the past in a specific context, because they are members of social groups too. Therefore, remembering is by definition a social act. Collective memories are part of a “whole ensemble of thoughts” that belong to a specific group. That is why remembering supports the social cohesion and existence of that particular group. It is by constituting a community of thoughts rather than by a resemblance of thoughts that memories have the quality of marking the borders of the group (Connerton, 1989, p. 36).

Assuming that remembering is indeed always socially constructed, the museum and memorial complex in Yerevan can be seen as frameworks in which memories are localized and shared among members of the group (Connerton, 1989, p. 37). It is especially because of ritual performances that memories are conveyed and sustained in such places (Connerton, 1989, p. 38). From this perspective it becomes clear why the teenage girl felt so emotional by what she had experienced in the museum and memorial. Because she belonged to the Armenian nation, the memories that were commemorated at this location were her memories too. She might not have experienced the genocide herself; being socialized in Armenia, she does have the memories.

Apparently, the public character of the memorial is very important. Imagine that every Armenian family would have its own memorial in its garden and commemorates the massacres individually, then remembering would loose its social significance. Or maybe even ‘worse’, when every Armenian would visit a virtual model of the memorial, and would commemorate the fallen victims online. When we visited the memorial it was because of the social aspect of commemoration that the setting made such an impression. People were crying, flowers were laid and you could just feel that these people were not alone, that they shared their thoughts and memories with those other people.

The social sharing is especially important on the 24^th of April, when hundreds thousands Armenians commemorate the victims of the Armenian genocide at this place. The website of the museum describes the feeling at that day as follows: “As each mourner brings flowers to place around the eternal fire, a sea of flowers can be seen encircling the area creating a solemn visual impact.” It might be obvious that the mourning Armenians feel connected to those others who have made an effort to commemorate their common ancestors. And by doing so, they do not only share their sorrows with those Armenians that live now, but in the same time they explicitly claim continuity with the lives of those Armenians that were killed during the genocide (cf. Connerton, 1989, p. 45). Or to put it differently, it would diminish the mnemonic power of the commemoration to state that it only reminds Armenians of the genocide; according to Connerton (1989, p. 43) we should rather say that the audience ceremonially gives the genocide an embodied form, a re-presentation of the event.

Obviously, Tsitsernakaberd is what Nora (1989) calls a lieux de mémoire; a place where memories are ‘stored’ and recollected. And maybe even more important; where people experience that their memories are not limited to the private sphere in contemporary times, but are shared in the public space and through time.