I WAS HERE. HERE I WAS. WAS I HERE? YES I WAS!

IMPRINTS

We constantly strive to mark the world with an imprint of our passing. Graffiti on the school desk, padlocks on the Ponte Milvio in Rome, updating a Facebook status, all are attempts to externalise the internal consciousness – to fix time, making that which fleeting, concrete. These are memorials to self.

CONTEXT TO OURSELVES

Taken individually these may be an exercise in vanity, albeit a universal one – but collectively they provide context to ourselves. The mundanities of life are concurrent from person to person whatever country or background, and so making them accessible allows us to relate to these people, to see that their fears are our fears, our desires are their desires.

 

MUNDANITIES OF LIFE

The present day is readily available to us, but this interaction with the past is less accessible.

Everyman...reaches out into the distant country of the past to inform his present and his future. Without this historical knowledge, this memory of things said and done, his today would be aimless and his tomorrow without significance (Carl Becker) 

The desire for this sense of context is shown by the popularity of historical dramas on television, archaeology, documentary – all of these are concerned with presenting the day to day, but from a different time. Yet it is one thing to learn about history, but another to truly within it. That feeling when someone asks you ‘Where were you when...?’ – the planes crashed into the Twin Towers, the Berlin Wall fell, when Kennedy was shot – and you remember, and you realise you share a moment in history with everyone.

SHARED POINT IN TIME

The one place that is synonymous with this realisation is the cemetery or memorial. Who does not check the age of the people buried there against their own – placing their death against your life? It is a place where the palimpsests of the community are made visible. At the same time, the cemetery is where this realisation is most required. During the trauma of bereavement is when we most need a connection to the world around us, back through time, and forwards into the future.

BACK THROUGH TIME & FORWARDS INTO THE FUTURE

We need to develop a typology for memorial that allows this connection, making it accessible not just to those who need it most, but to everyone in the day to day in order that today is not aimless and tomorrow has significance.