Drifting absence :: drafting memory

Abstract

The emotive power of a memorial derives from its ability to engage the viewer in active remembrance. The project considers the limitations of a monumentality which embraces a distinct division between viewer and memorial. Collapsing the traditionally bifurcated relationship between the viewer and object, the memorial becomes inhabitable- unifying the experience of the viewer with the substance and physicality of the memorial. Once the notion of the archetypal memorial is dissolved, the spatial memorial is then open to interpretation with respect to architectural conditions. The thesis proposes a migratory World War II memorial which inhabits the Pacific Ocean. Bound between the unfathomable sectional depth of the Pacific and the reaches of the sky, the memorial drifts in international waters across the seemingly infinite plane of the ocean. Tracing a peripatetic path across the expanse, the memorial makes manifest the intangible ephemera of memory and silence through the studied manipulation of spatial experience.