Art and Trauma- Ulmer Part 2

        A MEmorial intersects art and popular culture.  Due to its nature of being an abject monument, the MEmorial relies on popular culture for it’s inspiration, for the images and stories which cause the egent to see meaning and importance in the abject, the everyday.  The art is created around the event, the monument to the abject within culture.  The art springs forth from the emotion and personal memories and associations with the trauma.  The art stands as a testimonial to the trauma.

A MEmorial, composed of both the peripheral (the electronic device to be placed near the monument, reminding everyone of the abject sacrifice) and the testimonial (a website which mediates on the sacrifice), helps to stand as testament to the notion that Walter Benjamin puts forth, that “history was most accessible through an image” (58).  This idea of history seen through the image is not new, and we can see by our desire to erect monuments and photographs throughout the ages to commemorate different events.  If history is most accessible via images, than the images we put forth for everyone to see are the pieces of history we want to be remembered—the sensational, the “important.”  The idea of a MEmorial repositions the sensational.  Instead of accessing history through the images of the sensation, a MEmorial seeks to view history through the local accidents, the supposed “unimportant.”

The idea of history accessed through an image relates, according to Ulmer, to Roland Barthes idea of the third meaning of an image.  The third meaning is “obtuse, indirect, based on an involuntary memory or association triggered by a scene” (62). The viewer is wounded by what they see in the image, pricked by some memory or association that only they could feel in the image.  For instance, if the artist paints a landscape of a beach, two different people will have different memories pricked.  One person might recall a beach day that stood as the last time they were together as a family and the other might think of a nice day they had on the other side of the country at a beach there. 

Now, if we extend this image association to popular culture and events, the same thing happens.  Ulmer gives the examples of someone experiencing the collapse of the Twin Towers.  While they might recognize it and be shocked for the event being what it was, they might also see it as their own life falling apart.  Maybe they had lost their job and found themselves sliding into debt.  The fall of a cultural symbol could remind them of their own fall. 

A disaster should “stimulate creativity” (64).  It does stimulate creativity. And it begins as fragments, as small images from the news and culture.  Those fragments are turned into art—be it sculpture, book, or painting—and the MEmorial allows the viewer to gaze upon everything, finding recognition, resonating with the viewer.  These arts allow for consulting to begin to take place.

It seems to be that the MEmorial begins with a response.  For the abject to become a monument, the egent needs to have a response to the news.  For the monument, for the MEmorial to take form, there needs to be a “connection between the incidents reported in the news and personal experience” (65).  MEmorials are intensely personal.

Perhaps one of the main things that these monuments must be is “by the people” (80).  MEmorials are created by the personal experiences and the reported news.  They focus in on the third meaning, speaking in third voice.  They are the personal experiences of the egents and the viewers.

Ulmer writes that “The MEmorial, performing the EmerAgency motto (Problems B Us), treats the disaster as a source for understanding contemporary values, specifically as a mode of self-knowledge, rather than attempting to impose on the disaster a predetermined meaning” (109).  Perhaps the central idea of the MEmorial, the meaning of a disaster should not be imposed.  The MEmorial gives viewers the chance to see the disaster how they need to see it, through the emotion and images of the disaster.  The combination of the peripheral and the testimonial allows for both the viewer to be reminded of the sacrifice and the emotions to be called up, emotions which may link the viewer with other associations and memories involved with the disaster.

Art and trauma are inexplicably interlinked.  It does not seem as if one can exist without the other, and yet, trauma seems to constantly come before art.  Art can be seen as a testimonial.  Art, combined with the news of popular culture create the testimonial of the MEmorial.  It is the emotional aspect, the search for self knowledge within the disaster.

Questions:

1) Could all emotional art be considered a MEmorial if it is created in response to a disaster?

2)     If a MEmorial is, in many ways, a reconstruction of a personal story, how do we know what we are putting out there?  For instance, we might put up a MEmorial to call attention to a specific event, but does it matter if the meaning we want is missed? 

3)  How do you know the right emotion to put into the MEmorial?  Is there a “right” emotion?  Or does it all rest on the third meaning?