‘A name is the first
and final marker of individual rights, one fixed part of the ever-changing
human world. A name is the most basic characteristic of our human rights; no
matter how poor or how rich, all living people have a name, and it is endowed
with good wishes, the expectant blessings of kindness and virtue.’
Ai Weiwei
Perhaps a half-a-mile separates the Vietnam Memorial in The
Mall in Washington D.C. and the memorial to the students killed by the Sichuan
earthquake in China in 2008. The former, by Maya Ying Lin, sits unobtrusively
in the west end of the Mall, while Ai Weiwei’s installation, ‘Remembrance’, is
a temporary exhibit in the Hirshhorn Museum, further east towards the Capital.
Both memorials are extraordinary testimonies to the tragic loss of human life
in recent decades, and both, in very distinct ways, are intensely moving. From
a text technological perspective the differences are obvious and notable: the
Vietnam Memorial is discreet and yet absolutely public, created from black durable
granite, with sandblasted inscribed names.
Weiwei’s monument to the crushed students is materially
ephemeral: it is ink-jet printed onto smooth, matt paper and takes up an entire
wall of the Hirshhorn’s first floor, placed (surely strategically) as people
come up the escalator. Hardly anyone stopped to look at it. As I came up the
escalator, I assumed it was a list of donors to the museum, so I didn’t bother
to examine the wall more closely. There was some kind of voice in the
background, but this didn’t register, either.
On the way down from the second
floor, having seen Weiwei’s work, then, then I stopped to look. ‘Remembrance’
is transient and a surrogate for the ‘real’ list that resides permanently in
Weiwei’s workshop. It is public and yet private—huge but indoors, utterly visible
and yet easily missed. It shares this missableness with the Vietnam Memorial,
though the fame and cultural relevance of the latter draw people
to it. The Vietnam Memorial is permanent, monumental, reflective (and a place
for reflection), where the inscriptions can be touched and literally entered
into by the fingers of those searching for the traces of a loved one. The
smooth polished surface of the granite reflects the park behind it and the
shapes of those who pass by. In this way, viewers become part of the tragedy,
if only temporarily; and the world goes on both around and within the memorial,
reminding everyone of the transitory nature of life.
Both memorials use the sweep of their respective landscapes
to suggest unendingness and extensity of perspective. The Vietnam Memorial with
its angular centre (see photo 1) where the end of the war (1975) meets the beginning (1959)
is ten feet tall at this central point, but decreases in height as it moves
away in two directions. This amazing sight of the diminishing perspective
enhanced by diminishing size suggests the interminable nature of man’s feuding.
Weiwei’s monument seems to use the gentle curved sweep of the Hirshhorn’s
rounded architecture to fade into an indefinable end. The overall effect is
enhanced by the juxtaposition of the suddenness and brutality of the students’
deaths with the smoothness (efficiency of the state?) of the paper material and
the monument’s positioning.
Numbers are significant. They underscore the enormity (in
both its traditional and more recent meanings) of lost life. The veteran
gentleman who stands at the vertex of the Vietnam Memorial answered three
people’s questions--‘How many names are here?’--in the few moments that I stood
close to him. I asked him what question he is asked most often. ‘How many
died’, he replied. ’58,282’. This is twenty-six more names than are accounted
for in the information leaflet for the Memorial. This is thus an eventful text,
a fluid text. As the names of those missing-in-action, introduced by a cross,
are transformed into the names of those known to have died, the cross is
transformed into a diamond. Should those listed as missing-in-action ever be
found alive, the cross would be surrounded by a carved circle.
Weiwei’s eventful text is added to as the names of victims
are discovered by the investigators. His looks like the clinical exercise of
the registrar at a big event. The tabulated listing could be mistaken for some
form of spreadsheet counting exercise, until one looks more closely and the horror of the list is revealed by its scale.
The Vietnam Memorial,
meanwhile, also uses a sense of proportion to shock: the first 1959 granite
panel contains the names of those lost over six years; the second panel, the
names of those lost over five months; the third panel, those lost over five
weeks. That visual escalation of war is shocking; the accumulation of black and
white detail in Weiwei’s memorial, similarly so. Both are overwhelming.
Lovely post, ET. Memorials (as texts) are fluid not only in their inscription, of course, but also in their reception. I wonder what Sassoon would have made of these two, given his reaction to Menin Gate?
ReplyDeleteHere was the world’s worst wound. And here with pride
‘Their name liveth for ever,’ the Gateway claims.
Was ever an immolation so belied
As these intolerably nameless names?
Well might the Dead who struggled in the slime
Rise and deride this sepulchre of crime.
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