talking citizenry Does "talking citizenry" in the last line mean "citizens who only speak and do not take any measure (non-pragmatist citizens)"? Whiteread’s memorial does more, though, not in the sense of signifying memory but in facilitating its performance. By that I mean that it implicitly engages with the conflicted context of its siting, enabling the contradictory narratives of Juden Platz to be drawn out into the open and urging the public of Vienna to participate in a debate that is not pre-empted or prescribed by representation. It provokes without asserting and can ensure, therefore, as Eisenman’s memorial site does in Berlin, that the conversations continue. The ‘silence’ of its impenetrability, which implicitly poses an unresolved conundrum or secret of sorts, coupled with its ‘aesthetics of inversion’, suggests there is an other side that should reveal its hand or come out in the form of a talking citizenry.