improbable monument proposal

My proposal is to replace the Washington monument in Washington D.C. with a giant bullet to represent how the U.S. brings our culture, ideologies, commerce to other places by force.

Another idea is to replace the victory statue at Union Square with a holographic version of justice, with a blindfold. It will only be available to view at night, and in the day time, the tall column pedestal will be empty.

artists working with a (significant) monument and public memory

At Yerba Buena Gardens, right behind the Metreon in San Francisco, is the Martin Luther King, Jr. Memorial. The memorial is an art installation, situated behind a "majestic waterfall fifty feet high by twenty feet wide which cascades over Sierra granite." (1) It can be entered through an East or West entrance. From the East entrance, Dr. King's following quote from a speech he made in 1956 in San Francisco is etched into the granite and painted in gold, "I believe that a day will come when all God's children from bass black to treble white will be significant on the constitution's keyboard." This is tied in with the twelve subsequent glass panels in the walkway, each having carefully selected quotes from Dr. King's speeches and writings. These signify "the 'call and response' and the twelve bars of the traditional blues form." (2) After the quote, there is a large illuminated photograph taken by Amelia Ashley-Ward of the San Francisco civil rights activists commemorating the 20th anniversary of the 1963 March on Washington. Each quote is translated into one of San Francisco's nine sister cities' languages, as well as African and Arabic. The translations are not explicitly tagged with the language they are in, but with the help of the internet, I figured it out. The following are the twelve quotes:

1. These are revolutionary times. All over the globe men are revolting against old systems of exploitation and oppression; and out of the wombs of a frail world, new systems of justice and equality are being born. The shirtless and barefoot people of the land are raising up as never before. (Translated into Tagalog)
2. I have the audacity to believe that peoples everywhere can have three meals a day for their bodies, education and culture for their minds, and dignity, equality and freedom for their spirits. I believe that what self-centered men have torn down men other-centered can build up. (Translated into Japanese)
3. An individual has not started living until he can rise above the narrow confines of his individualistic concerns to the broader concerns of all humanity. (Translated into Chinese)
4. We must rapidly begin to shift from a thing-oriented society to a person-oriented society. When machines and computers, profit motives and property rights are considered more important than people, the giant triplets of racism, materialism, and militarism are incapable of being conquered. (Translated into Korean)
5. Through our scientific genius, we have made the world a neighborhood; now, through our moral and spiritual development, we must make of it a brotherhood. In a real sense, we must learn to live together as brothers, or we will perish together as fools. (Translated into African Zulu)
6. There is nothing in all the world greater than freedom. It is worth paying for; It is worth going to jail for. I would rather die in abject poverty with my convictions than live in inordinate riches with the lack of self-respect. (Translated into Hebrew)
7. As the movement took hold, a revival of social awareness spread across campuses from Cambridge to California. It spilled over the boundaries of the single issue of desegregation and encompassed questions of peace, civil liberties, capital punishment and others. (Translated into Arabic)
8. I refuse to accept the cynical notion that nation after nation must spiral down a militaristic stairway into the hall of thermonuclear destruction. I believe that unarmed truth and unconditional love will have the final word in reality. This is why right temporarily defeated is stronger than evil triumphant. (Trasnslated into Greek)
9. Men for years have been talking about war and peace. But now, no longer can they just talk about it. It is no longer the choice between violence and non-violence in this world. It's non-violence or non-existence. (Translated into Italian)
10. The ultimate measure of a man is not where he stands in moments of comfort and convenience but where he stands at times of challenge and controversy. (Translated into Irish/Gaelic)
11. When we let freedom ring, when we let it ring from every village and every hamlet, from every state and every city. we will be able to speed up that day when all of God's children, black men and white men, Jews and Gentiles, Protestants and Catholics, will be able to join hands and sing in the words of the old Negro Spiritual, 'Free at last! Free at last! Thank God Almighty, we are free at last!' (Translated into African Ivory-coast)
12. Like anybody, I would like to live a long life. Longevity has its place. But I'm not concerned about that now. I just want to do God's will and he's allowed me to go up to the mountain. And I've looked over and I've seen the Promised Land. I may not get there with you; but I want you to know tonight that we, as a people, will get to the Promised Land. (Translated into Spanish)

The first panel begins with Dr. King acknowledging the time oppressed people were rising up during the 1950's and 60's. The following four panels reflect his philosophies regarding equality, humanity, dignity and brotherhood. The next five panels then progress into his firm belief in freedom for all, the struggle for it through non-violent means and that the ultimate measure of men are the challenges and controversies encountered. The eleventh panel is a repetitious call to let freedom ring, similar to Dr. King's renown oratorical style. The twelfth panel was from Dr. King's last eerily foreshadowing speech before his assassination in which he alludes to Moses talking to the Israelites. There is another illuminated photograph, this one taken by Bob Adelman of Martin Luther King, Jr. delivering his "I have a Dream" speech at the 1963 March on Washington. It ends with a quote from the "I have a Dream" speech, similarly etched into the granite and painted gold: "No. No, we are not satisfied, and we will not be satisfied until 'justice rolls down like water and righteousness like a mighty stream.'" This is tied in with the waterfall feature, assisting in drowning out the city's noise and lulling an individual to focus on the words of Dr. King. The water is a deliberate element use for its' "cathartic, purifying, transformative, and regenerative capacities" according to artist Bill Viola.(3) Sculptor Houston Conwill, his sister Poet Estella Conwill Majozo, and architect Joseph De Pace were commissioned to create the memorial. The artists have also collaborated and down other memorials/monuments in major cities across the United States, which have African-American, African-American leaders, or civil rights themes.

Bibliography:
(1) Yerba Buena Gardens. 2004. MJM Management Group. 25 Feb 2009. <http://www.yerbabuenagardens.com/features/gardens.html#3>.
(2) "Martin Luther King Jr. Memorial." Travel Spots USA. 25 Feb 2007. 25 Feb 2009. <http://www.magazineusa.com/us/cityguide/show.aspx?state=ca&unit=sanfrancisco&doc=70,0003&dsc=Martin_Luther_King_Memorial>.
(3) Getlein, Mark. Living With Art. 8th ed. New York: McGraw-Hill, 2008. 57.

monuments, memory and public space

This blog post has been way overdue. The reading (see Paula Levine's The Past in Present Tense) was really meaty so it required a lot of my brain power to process. Now that I've had time to digest the information, let me relay how I used Levine's text to examine a monument of personal significance in San Francisco's Union Square...

Levine wrote, "Monuments and public commemoratives can, when they work well, reeducate us to the events and people before us as a way to pay respect and reactivate daily life. They can be the vectors of memory, waypoints that mark the events, people, sites, and moments of significance that the culture, nation, town and city value."

In relation to the monument in San Francisco's Union Square, it was erected in 1903 to commemorate Dewey's victory in the Battle of Manila Bay during the Spanish-American War. It was for the U.S. people, specifically the people of San Francisco--to remind them that U.S. involvement in war is justifiable, so long as the "good guys" win in the end.

Levine continued, "...However, those same commemoratives can also close down, delimit, and reduce complexities of history, cultural memory, events, ideas and lives, and appear as objects "for nostalgia or consumption."

U.S. citizens believed the military was doing "good" by being in the Philippines-- a completely narrow, one-sided affair. The fact that news of Spanish-American War was being filtered, skewed and downright withheld was unknown to them. What historians tend to leave out was that the U.S. became interested in acquiring the Philippines and actually purchased their "victory" from the Spanish. The Pilipinos were already in the midst of fighting for their own freedom, coming to a head in kicking out the Conquistadors themselves. With American involvement, the U.S. government tried to portray themselves as the liberators of their "small monkey-like brothers." The government and media made the U.S. people believe the war lasted until 1898 was a technicality-- the Philippine-American War went from the subsequent year, 1899 until 1913. The following war, the Philippine-American War which was actually just a continuation from the Spanish-American War, was minimally referred to in the media at the time and was said to have been won in 1902, though this is now contrary to what we know now.

Additional flags beneath U.S. flag are: peace, lands for the people, public improvements, education, and prosperity.

         
In Levine's The Past in Present Tense, monuments may embed a physical mnemonic-device to instill certain ideas and yet may dilute truth. (12) I see this monument attest to this unfortunately, which is still smack-dab in the middle of a bustling international city. Paradoxically, presently, not many people know the significance of the Dewey monument in Union Square. But the fact that it still stands prominently in such a liberal, radical place that its' citizens take pride in, shows the power that lie in monuments.