In Memory Through Seeing

This is my talk from the School of the Art Insitute's Symposium for BA Visual and Critical Studies students. Please read through and contact me with any comments at emedof@saic.edu. The full text of my thesis will be available for public viewing at Flaxman Library (37 S Wabash) beginning in Fall 2010.

*Note: I can't seem to properly format paragraph breaks so *** will indicate where each new one begins.
For full text with citations, please consult the printed version.

IN MEMORY THROUGH SEEING
***Like the archetypal image of the time traveler, who leaves the present to revisit the past, so too does the traumatized person. However, that person is at times unable to leave the past as such and constantly finds memory and reality colliding in alarming ways. The task of the traumatized time traveler is to build bridges to safely and fluidly transport him from past to present. By learning about this kind of emotional and mental seesawing, we enable more authentic representations of trauma and recovery to come to the fore. But what happens when we try to reify experience? How can visual culture respond to the complex issues surrounding traumatic memory? Many important caveats exist with regard to understanding this topic, but it is impossible to cover or even be aware of all of them. However, of particular interest to me is how the experience of traumatic memory informs and is affected by visual objects such as monuments and other instruments of collective memory.
*** Problematic victim/survivor binaries exist, much to the detriment of people who experience traumatic memory. To binarize such a complicated experience is to say, in effect, that one cannot be a survivor if he or she is suffering, and conversely, that healed is the same as restored. Since traumatic memory requires the individual to constantly exist as both victim and survivor, as it were, there is no distinction to be made between either – lived traumatic memory is a composite experience that combines aspects of reliving trauma with existing in present time and reality. A potential way to get past the binary is to theorize the concept of the traumatized individual as time traveler: this person must constantly negotiate his or her unresolved past – lived memory – with the ongoing present.
***The trauma narrative is constructed from the survivor’s ability to connect with and articulate the past into the present. However, traumatic memory bears the burdensome characteristic of transporting those who experience it back into the occurrence of trauma – everything from sexual assault to surviving a plane crash – effectively taking them “back in time.” In trauma theory parlance, this is known as intrusion. Traumatic memory haunts, as it follows one constantly, even while asleep. Flashbacks unseat the survivor from his present reality and place him in an unpredictable, fluctuating relationship with his memory. By functioning as accessible visual markers of time and experience, monuments may be able to explore a variety of the complex issues associated with traumatic memory.
***I have made the argument that a monument is most effective when it occupies space indefinitely. Maya Lin’s Vietnam Veteran’s Memorial Wall in Washington, D.C. is effective in this way. In 1979, a group of Vietnam veterans, who dubbed themselves The Memorial Fund, sought support for “a tangible symbol of recognition from the American people." By 1981, after raising more than $8, 000,000.00 from private sources, the project came to fruition. A call for entries was announced for the design of the memorial, and 21 year-old Maya Lin’s design was unanimously chosen. Construction was completed a year later.
*** I visited the memorial as a child, before I had opinions about trauma recovery and public memory. However, that may give me the best lucidity, as I can still remember being affected by its stark grey form that seemed to go on forever. The memorial is imposing, physical, and real. It is trauma and loss reified to monumental proportion. Looking through all the names gives the sensation of scrolling through an endless document on a computer screen, yet the names retain their humanity. Instead of getting lost in the sheer volume of textual information, each name seems to stand out and present itself as a singular being indeed, one that is gone forever.
***There is significance in the idea that the Memorial Fund sought the creation of a tangible monument to symbolize the suffering and general war experiences of veterans. The Vietnam War was one of the most divisive in history and left many people in a position where their histories and experiences were not necessarily welcomed in the public consciousness. The power of a physical monument, then, lies in its ability to invade the visual landscape and demand attention. The Vietnam Memorial exemplifies the way these visual objects can function in a space as markers of varied lived experience.
***And what of monuments that change over time? Some monuments are particularly effective because they change, existing in time as well as space. It could be said these monuments live on as those they serve to commemorate cannot – a willful reminder of the necessity to publicly remember. In these instances, the trauma of the community, or its empathetic response to traumas of individuals, is explored.
***A living monument, as it were, is one that responds to the constant organic growth of memory. Memory is itself a living creature, separate from and at times in opposition to us, with which we are forced to interact. Intrusion, as previously mentioned, is at the core of traumatic memory. However, the need to commemorate is strong, perhaps even stronger than the desire to forget. Michael P. Levine writes, “[memorials’] significance is to be found largely in their capacity to represent or convey certain meanings…and perform certain necessary psychological tasks. It is their meaning, or how they are interpreted and function, that counts in terms of the memorial’s success." A memorial fails if its visitors cannot connect their own histories and memories to it.
***One example of a successful monument-maker is Polish artist Krzysztof Wodiczko. His work explores the intersections of critical thought, aesthetic values, and emotional depth necessary for a monument’s success. Wodiczko himself acts as conduit of experience, reified object-maker, and trust-gatherer as he, very sensitively, dialogues with the survivors his work elevates. In doing so, he creates realistic yet refined representations of their realities. His work is crucial to the future of public memory as it posits victims, survivors, and perpetrators of trauma both within the context of critical discourse and the daunting public sphere.
***Wodiczko dutifully identifies issues of trauma, memory, and public space. In 1999, after receiving the Hiroshima Art Prize, he created a work about the bombing. The resulting piece is heartrending in its simplicity – projections of survivors’ hands moving across the A-Bomb dome as they recounted their stories. The dome, which sits atop the Aioi River, provides the context of physical history and destruction as it is one of the few buildings not obliterated by the explosion. The river itself is an essential component to the aesthetic success of the piece and also to the intangible weight of its meaning, signifying past and future, tragedy and hope, through the movement of the water.
***Wodiczko’s Hiroshima project is not unlike Maya Lin’s Vietnam memorial in that both are contested objects around which subjectivities and memories collide. In the case of the Hiroshima project, Wodiczko has received criticism for “memorializing an act of war” as a means to commemorate peace, and the oxymoron therein.2 Wodiczko has said, “…if there is any contribution to peace here, it is to bring to the surface what is hidden." Like the Hiroshima project, the Vietnam Memorial functions in this way, as it commanded attention for a war that people wanted to bury in the past. Notions of visibility with regard to monuments commonly cause conflict in the public consciousness because of a society’s unwillingness to confront.
***As Michael Levine pointed out, the success of a monument depends on its ability to be not only seen, but felt. By deepening our culture’s understanding of tragic events vis-à-vis visual objects, a curious effect is thereby produced – the ability to understand triumph. Monuments to trauma do not simply acknowledge the darkest parts of experience, but also the capacity for endurance, survival, and rebirth. In fact, it can be argued that these monuments, though somber in nature, are actually celebrations of life and spirit, and have the potential to rejuvenate public spaces in ways other public works cannot.
***However, the politics of space being what they are, it is unlikely to see a proliferation of work like Wodiczko’s anytime soon. Western culture has had a tremendous delay in matters of expressing knowledge of its ills. For example, how can the trauma of rape be understood when the social climate is still mired in the misogynist mythology that sex crimes are crimes of passion? In order to acknowledge trauma on a large scale, the society has to begin to come to terms with its failures. It must be understood that in order for trauma to exist, there must also be the production of perpetrators of trauma.