Process Paper

For my final project I decided to create a blog that documents a personal interaction with war memorials in New York City. I decided to use the broadest definition possible to ensure the widest scope of aesthetic. For the purposes of this project I am defining war memorials as any sculpture or installation built to commemorate persons or events related to war in the United States. I wished for this blog to–like war memorials themselves–act as a community gathering point for metacritical consideration of the pieces being explored;for individuals to come together and freely exchange information and ideas regarding the subject. This project also aims to examine methods of participation in the creation of documentary media. The blog is fully interactive and allows for participation on a multitude of levels: passive participation is the user reading the blog with no commentary; active participation is reading and participating in commentary and feedback for individual posts; reflexive participation is a reader who goes on to generate content of their own. In this case relevant content generation is any sort of media generated during a visit to a war memorial.

Unfortunately due to time constraints and a significant portion of my time being dedicated to the production of my Senior Work, not as much attention was paid to attracting a community of readers to the site. If I had been able to give the project more attention, I would have spent time developing a community of readers, commentators, and contributors to exhibit the full scope of both the project and the medium selected for creative expression.

I chose to utilize a blog for a number of reasons. My primary reason for using this format was because new technology and Internet advancements have changed the way amateur documentary content is generated. This idea falls within the sphere of the “Web 2.0″ concept, which has been defined by Tim O’Reilly, a noted blogger, as “the business revolution in the computer industry caused by the move to the Internet as platform, and an attempt to understand the rules for success on that new platform.”[1]Hcalls the process by which more and more efficient applications are produced at collecting and organizing networks and information as “harnessing collective intelligence”. I chose WordPress.com to host my blog because previous experience with the site had shown that it was the most flexible of its type regarding the extent to which I could utilize various forms of media, including photo, audio, and video. In conjunction with WordPress, I opened an account on Flickr.com to host photos for the blog. Utilizing Web 2.0 technology I was able to produce 90% of the content for this blog on my iPhone. The iPhone itself was hacked, or “jailbroken” so that I could utilize 3rd party applications to upload content. For example, I used a program called Pushr to send my photos to my Flickr account, I used a program called “Notes” to write and email text to WordPress for entries, and I used a program called VoiceNotes to make audio recordings.

These technologies open the way for new forms of documentary. The rise of blogging seems to be a symptom of a growing interest in personal narrative. Websites such as YouTube.com have facilitated video blogging, a logical continuation of the blogging phenomenon given technological advancements and the wide availability of webcams. Letting popular media be the barometer of the social impact of these technologies, here are a few interesting examples for consideration. The first is the rise of reality television as a popular genre in the 90s indicates an origin somewhere in the cross section of the rise of cable television, the rise of the Internet, and the rise of cheaper consumer technology. I feel that reality television programming points the compass to the rise of video blogging and personal documentary. The second example of the social impact of these new multimedia consumer technologies is much more recent. January’s blockbuster movie Cloverfieldis a fictional meditation on both the demand todocument, and fordocument that has arisen in, at the very least, American metropolitan culture. The movie is shot entirely as if from a hand held video camera and documents the destruction of New York City by a terrible monster from one man’s perspective. The movie’s producer, J.J. Abrams bares witness to the obsession of the generation with documenting their own lives, at one point the speaking through the character filming about the importance of documenting horrific events. Cloverfieldtries to show us what we look like in the middle of a war zone, and what our concerns are. This project pays special consideration to personal narrative and perspective, and utilizes new multimedia consumer technology towards the end of producing a comprehensive document of experience.

While in the course we dealt with a variety of mediums through which to consider the aesthetics of war, I felt that sculptural war memorial was very largely overlooked. While pieces like the Bayeux Tapestry and Trajan’s Column were considered for their value as cultural narratives, we did not spend much time considering them as geographic focal points for cultural collective experiences. Stylistically, war memorials run the gamut from representational to abstract, but I think that another important point for consideration of these pieces is how communities respond to and interact with the physical space of the memorial.

Further, I was extremely interested during the discussions raised following the showings of Werner Herzog’s films. Particularly Herzog’s works challenged my notions of what documentary is, and the inherent fiction of documentary. All documentary seems to be tainted with the subjectivity of the director. But for Herzog, it is not the role of the documentary film maker to portray the reality of the events as they happened, but rather to convey as pure a sense of the reality as can be conveyed through the medium. For Herzog this came in the form of sometimes directing Dieter Dengler during the filming of Little Dieter. I realized during the course of this project that my role as documenter of my own experience is to record events as I see them, then report reflexively on the meaning of those experiences for me. Since I am both subject and documenter, it is my decision how to treat the material. The blog format is ideal for this because it places the media itself side by side with the commentary text, providing the reader with the experiences of both the subject and the documenter of the subject. It should be noted that this project is on-going and will continue to be updated as I continue to explore war memorials in New York City.

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[1] http://radar.oreilly.com/archives/2006/12/web-20-compact-definition-tryi.html visited on May 11th, 2008.

Chinatown War Memorial

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I was walking in Chinatown with Tim the other day when I noticed an interesting arch across the street.

Closer inspection allowed me to see the inscription at the top of the arch:

It looks as though I stumbled upon another kind of war memorial! This one is the Lt. Benjamin Ralph Kimlau Memorial archway. It is particularly interesting to me because the concept is more abstract both in memorial content and in aesthetic. Rather than any sort of realistic depiction of a soldier or soldiers, instead we see an arch meant to represent “Americans of Chinese Ancestry” who have fought and died in American conflict. Further investigation online narrowed that idea down to Chinese-Americans killed during World War II. The timing works out, since the arch was erected in 1962.

On the same tiny block of street is another kind of war memorial. This one commemorates Lin Ze Xu, a man who lived in the 18th Century and, according to the statue, at least, is considered a “Pioneer in the war against drugs”.

Grand Army Plaza

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Grand Army Plaza forms the entranceway into the beautiful Prospect Park. The area surrounding the park was originally part of a vast planned street way of equivalence to Avenue de la Grande Armee in Paris.

The centerpiece of this space is the Arch, designed by John H. Duncan and incorporated into the planning of Calvert Vaux and Frederick Law Olmstead, the designers of Prospect Park and Central Park.

The Arch is a Civil War memorial depicting Union Soldiers protected by Roman-esque gods.  On the interior of the arch are Abraham Lincoln and Ulysses S. Grant on horseback.

Arch at night:

Arch during day:

Accessibility is definitely an issue with this piece. In the years since Olmstead and Vaux worked on the site, poor urban planning took over. The arch is circled with four lanes of traffic and limited crosswalks, making an up-close encounter something of a death-defying experience.

Here’s some more detailed shots of the arch:

This last image is of the top piece on the arch, The Quadriga from a public account on flickr, since I couldn’t climb up myself.

Interestingly enough, when I first saw the arch two years ago, I assumed that the female figure in the chariot was Minerva-Athena, the Greco-Roman goddess of war and wisdom. However, the wikipedia article on I read on the Arch called her Columbia. I had never heard the name in reference to a personage, so I did a Boolean search on Google and found a VERY interesting blog article:

“In the late 18th and early 19th century, a stream of images crystallized the goddess form into ‘Columbia.’ The ideas that animated her can best be seen by her attributes, that is the objects or symbols that are displayed with her. She is most often shown with an eagle, broken chains and pottery, a cornucopia, images of George Washington, a laurel wreath, a liberty pole and cap, a liberty tree, an olive branch, a rattlesnake, a shield and a stone tablet. The statue of Columbia behind the speaker’s chair in the house of representatives is a fine example. In this one we see the Eagle, and on the other side a snake coiled around a Greek column.

Columbia is not a Greek or Roman goddess, although she borrowed a few attributes when she needed them, but a consciously created god-form archetype inserted into the mass consciousness of the country at its founding.”

Great stuff! So America has her own goddess! I never knew! The imagery evoked, though, of a patron protector fierce in battle, triumphant and victorious is quite beautiful. Also the image of this goddess watching over American soldiers. Beautiful. Too bad today’s polemic doesn’t include this kind of female goddess figure. Even if it could be utilized to perpetuate conflict, at least it’s an interesting symbol.

Union Square: George Washington

The power of this statue seems to radiate outwards in the form of descending stairways and an open square area to the south of Union Square Park.

Washington cuts an impressive figure on its own, but can function as a powerful background symbol to groups utilizing the space. While I was walking around, the ASPCA (American Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals) was setting up an elaborate event. I cut them out of the photo frame, though :P

I find it pretty interesting that this statue of Washington, a Founding Father and war-hero, has been a meeting point for many anti-war protests and anti-war culture in this new millennial war. Washington here sometimes functions inversely to the purpose of war memorials, which is often to memorialize the events of war in a romantic way, charging the memorial itself with meaning for the citizens for whom it has been built.

Walking around the perimeter of Union Square on any day will bring  you into contact with artists whose work protests various violences done by the American government. I have been to more than one anti-war rallies or anti-drug enforcement marches. If I want any sort of Fulun Dafa or Free Tibet memorabilia, I can find it within the eyeshot of George Washington.

Union Square Park

My first stop is going to be Union Square Park. Now, I don’t know much about the history of this park, but I’ve walked through it enough times to know that this crucial junction point in the city functions as a site for memorial and for community gathering.

Like I said, I don’t know much about the history, so I went over to the website for the New York City Department of Parks & Recreation and checked out their page on Union Square which was chock full of interesting information about the park.

For example: Considering the presence of an Abraham Lincoln statue at the north end of the park, I had always thought that “Union” Square referred to the “Union” soldiers of the American Civil War. However, the origin of the name pre-dates the Civil War, and actually refers to the “union” of two major roads in Manhattan: Bloomingdale Road, now called Broadway; and Bowery Road, which is now 4th Avenue.

There are four major statues in Union Square Park — George Washington (1856, Henry Kirke Brown), Abraham Lincoln (1868, Henry Kirke Brown), Marquis de Lafayette (1873, Frederic-Auguste Bartholdi), and Mohandas Gandhi (1986, Kantilal B. Patel), as well as a large flagstaff, Independence Flagstaff – Charles F. Murphy Memorial (1926, Anthony de Franisci).

What do these figures mean for us? In the American cultural consciousness, Washington and Lafayette are heroes of the American Revolution. Washington represents leadership, honor, and the triumph of America in conflict. Lafayette represents the cavalry to the American revolutionaries — a
symbol of divine grace that turned the tide of the war against the
British soldiers.

Washington is a “Founding Father”, with a firm grasp on the handle mixing the melting-pot. The myth of the First American President, George Washington, is one of creation through conflict, not unlike many cosmological creation myths. Washington, the leader of a new pantheon of American gods, forged America in the fires of conflict and battle with the previous regime. It reminds me of the old Mesopotamian stories of the gods who battled Tiamat, the primordial sea, and used the shell of her dead body to create the earth.

The Washington statue at Union Square is truly venerable like a father-god, riding in full regalia on the back of a magnificent steed.

Lincoln is another figure made larger-than-life and mythologized by America. He is a victim of conflict, struck down unnecessarily for holding up the highest of humanitarian ideals — freedom. Whether this is a fair and accurate portrayal or not, Lincoln is described in history books as being the “liberator of slaves”, although new methods of telling history have brought this notion into scrutiny.

Regardless, Lincoln cuts an imposing figure in statue form. Originally situated in the southwestern corner of the park, Lincoln is now positioned directly opposite along the vertical axis of the park from the Washington Statue.

The statue of Gandhi now sits in the south west, where Lincoln was once positioned. His history is not as immediately culturally relevant to Union Square Park’s statuary as we have seen it so far. However, Gandhi and Washington both overthrew the colonial oppression of the British, and both Gandhi and Lincoln fought for equality and respect for all levels of culture and class, as well as both being the victims of assassination.

The Lincoln and Washington statues function as focal points in the park. People use them as meeting points (I have done this many times). People rally about them, drawing from the power of their myths to enervate audiences and draw them into a collective cultural experience.

Some pictures:

George Washington

Marquis de Lafayette sits at the edge of the park, facing West to France, his home country.

Abraham Lincoln

Spaypainted at the base of Lincoln’s statue:

“Obedience is not Patriotism”

First Entry

This blog is meant to serve several purposes:

1) To document war memorials in New York City historically, pictorially, and experientially.

2) Through the utilization of the blog format, create a space for communal dialog concerning war memorials, their histories, personal experiences, and anything else that might contribute to a thorough collective consideration on the natures of war and art.

3) To satisfy the requirements for a final creative project in The New School’s undergraduate interdisciplinary lecture “War & Art”. The requirements as given on the syllabus:

Final Project: May be one of the following: a) a substantial creative project (literary, visual, etc.) that deeply engages the course material in aesthetically compelling manner; b) a proposal for an addition or revision to the syllabus, that includes a description of the new item, a detailed argument for its inclusion in the course, a lesson plan, and an annotated bibliography; or c) an 8-10 page research paper (this may be an extension of one of your short assignments), complete with secondary sources.

- “War and Art: Literature, Image, History – ULEC 2120 – Syllabus – Spring 2008″

It is my hope that this blog will function in satisfying option (a) as a creative multimedia project that explores the ways in which war and art converge in permanence within civilian populations.

I end this first entry with a poem by Wilfred Owen, written on the fields of battle during the First World War.

“Dulce et Decorum Est”

“Bent double, like old beggars under sacks,
Knock-kneed, coughing like hags, we cursed through sludge,
Till on the haunting flares we turned our backs
And towards our distant rest began to trudge.
Men marched asleep. Many had lost their boots
But limped on, blood-shod. All went lame; all blind;
Drunk with fatigue; deaf even to the hoots
Of tired, outstripped Five-Nines that dropped behind.

Gas! Gas! Quick, boys!–An ecstasy of fumbling,
Fitting the clumsy helmets just in time;
But someone still was yelling out and stumbling
And flound’ring like a man in fire or lime…
Dim, through the misty panes and thick green light,
As under a green sea, I saw him drowning.

In all my dreams, before my helpless sight,
He plunges at me, guttering, choking, drowning.

If in some smothering dreams you too could pace
Behind the wagon that we flung him in,
And watch the white eyes writhing in his face,
His hanging face, like a devil’s sick of sin;
If you could hear, at every jolt, the blood
Come gargling from the froth-corrupted lungs,
Obscene as cancer, bitter as the cud
Of vile, incurable sores on innocent tongues,–
My friend, you would not tell with such high zest
To children ardent for some desperate glory,
The old Lie: Dulce et decorum est
Pro patria mori.”