Emerging Connections
University of Hawai'i at Mānoa, School of Architecture
Black Statues: Where We Stand on Race within Our Capital Space View Digital Media
Paper Presentation in a Themed Session Frederick Gooding, Jr.
In answering the question, “How does society move towards reconciliation within a previously constructed environment?” one compelling answer may be “by adding color to the canvas plain.” In analyzing the neoclassical architecture dominant of the buildings surrounding the Smithsonian on the National Mall in Washington, D.C., very few statues of nonwhite individuals can be seen. Many early city planners thought that not only white people as subjects were best suited for eternal, public remembrance, but also, that the statues themselves should be white. Thus, many metropolitan museums favored this approach that privileged ancient sculpture. Yet, the original Greco-Roman statues that early American sculptors imitated were indeed full of color as many were painted. The exclusion and marginalization of certain social groups or individuals from public monument spaces merits reinterpretation especially in light of technology that allows us to reimagine how colorful our cityscapes could truly become. This paper builds upon the concept that statues are by artful design, discursive constructs that keep alive ongoing historical debates. It also seeks to be in conversation with prior research establishing statues as expressive, informative historical markers. Given the involved and intricate history of race relations in the U.S., it is revealing to analyze statues adorning our museum hallways as political tools evidencing and legitimating equitable presence; technology can assist us in reconsidering what our shared heritage should truly look like.
Mnemonic Ecologies: Memory and Conservation in Post-violent Landscapes View Digital Media
Paper Presentation in a Themed Session Sonja Pieck
Based on a just-completed book, this paper presents the framework of "mnemonic ecologies" to explore the nexus of memory and conservation in landscapes of post-violence. My case study is the former Cold War borderland between socialist East and capitalist West Germany. This region was the location of the most militarized border infrastructure the world had seen at the time. Between 1949 and 1989, dozens of villages were razed to make way for the border’s construction, and hundreds of East Germans died in their attempt to escape to the West. At the same time, the border depopulated central Germany, and in this new human vacuum hundreds of endangered plant and animal species found refuge from agricultural and urban expansion elsewhere, in the process creating new, emergent ecologies. When the border regime collapsed in 1989, West and East German conservationists began converting the border region into a protected area called the “Green Belt.” It is a controversial project, often opposed by landowners and farmers who fear renewed state expropriation and a “greenwashing” of a painful past. Drawing on eight years of ethnographic and archival research, this paper explores the strengths and limitations of conservation here, focusing on environmental, political, and cultural strategies that curate the past and the border’s crumbling remains in ways that elevate some layers of memory while erasing others. I ultimately argue that by attending to traumatic histories and honoring emotional attachments to landscape, conservation–in Germany and beyond–can become a more multidisciplinary, empathetic, and effective process.
