Story Telling as a Form of Public Memorial

Public memorials and ritual healing...

Modern society rarely acknowledges the necessity and power of ritual healing in every day life. As a consequence, our culture suffers spiritually, emotionally and physically. War, for example, wounds us as a society in body, mind and spirit. Tens of thousands sacrificed their lives in Vietnam and the spiritual, emotional and physical impact upon the friends and families of the dead creates a collective need that requires a ritual of acknowledgement and healing. Although the Vietnam conflict represents a wound in our cultural consciousness imbued with the power to tear our society apart, the Vietnam Veterans Memorial (VVM) can be seen to transform that power into one of healing and life.

Maya Lin’s proposal for the VVM afforded her the rare opportunity to design a singular large scale public monument in our nation’s capitol city. There are many state and city memorials to the war; however Lin’s design is the only one to honor in one place, all the dead of that conflict. As a result the VVM has become a significant place of pilgrimage for those who come for healing, curiosity, honoring and remembrance.

Memorials, commemorative objects that remind us of people who died, or an event in which people died, are one of the few remaining art forms that may facilitate healing. However, one must visit these memorials to partake of the experience in full. Current media outlets such as the internet, television and film have access to a wider audience than location specific physical memorials. Using these media as a way to remember the past expands the opportunity for cultural healing by creating memorials through storytelling.

George Santayana said, “Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it.” I believe that our collective memory of the past, including our memory of war, requires some form or symbol to facilitate our remembrance. Public memorials serve to help us to avoid historic repetition and heal the social and cultural wounds of war by keeping the memory of the dead in our consciousness. In my thesis and MFA project, I will explore and portray the VVM as a place of pilgrimage, a temple to the fallen, and a symbol of all that is right and wrong in the modern world.

As an artist I think about my responsibility to use my abilities and vision to create art and to also serve the world and the people around me. I ask myself, “What can I do? What art can I create that would serve as a form of memorial serving the same good end as the VVM?”

D_