Excavating
the Trauma
Horizon E
detail from “…writing his dream inside a rectangle.” by Ashley M. Freeby
The Surface of It: Difficulties in
Memorializing Trauma
by Sophia Park
From a pandemic to more Black community members being murdered by police, we’ve become all too familiar with death in recent months. Each death is a jarring reminder of the ways in which society has failed us. Society, as we know it, accepts overcrowded hospitals unable to hold and treat all of the sick flowing in. It accepts the seemingly never-ending, growing list of Black lives dying at the hands of police. We sit closely with death that comes too early caused by deeply rooted injustices that saturate all parts of our society.
This is not a new trend for the United States. This country was founded on the genocide of indigenous populations, slavery that built racist systems still permeating through society, and global wars that this country initiated at the name of protecting “freedom.” Reflecting on the deaths caused by these traumatic events is important now more than ever.
In the summer of 2014, police killed a young Black teenager in Ferguson, Missouri. Michael Brown was walking with his friend when he was shot multiple times after a short altercation with a police officer. His death catapulted him into public immortality as the incident helped lift the veil on the systemic racism that Ferguson’s Black community had been facing. The Ferguson community, and the greater United States, collectively grieved his death, which also became a rallying point to demand change for unchecked police brutality.
Memorializing an important historical moment that brings attention to the continuing murder of Black people by the police is necessary and difficult. In order for society to change, memorializing is needed yet that very remembrance can trigger deep trauma particularly in the directly impacted communities. To remember and honor unjust deaths like Michael’s, it is important to memorialize with a nuanced approach as their lives facilitate moments for learning, growth, and change as we work towards a more just society.
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Michael Brown’s family asked the city to remove the asphalt section on which he was killed. Michael’s body remained on that asphalt for four hours, where anyone walking or driving could clearly see his lifeless body. Four hours is enough time for a body to extend its memories to the very fabric of the street, the asphalt and paint, and to force those who walk by that road to forever remember what happened. In this way, the Earth will not easily forget the injustices that take place on its surface and as the humans who occupy it we must fight for justice to rise and heal the traumatic wound.
A question surfaces as the asphalt is removed from the ground. If the physical material which an event occurred on and which people associate an event with is removed, then what is left?
We remember passed life in various ways. One of the most common memorials we see is the headstone. Headstones serve as physical reminders of a life. In most cases, the names and dates that a person lived are written on them to tell the living who used to be with us. Headstones also serve as a place for engagement. We hold funerals and other services, whether in private or public, to mourn together and celebrate a life lived. A headstone is not the only way to memorialize. Throughout history, we’ve used everything from figurative or abstract sculptures to the Internet as memorials, thus demonstrating their mutable nature.
This flexibility in defining a memorial’s materiality extends to its functions, which asks us to think critically about the relationship between object and memory. An object provides a material connection to an event that may not be part of the memory of someone who visits a memorial site. It facilitates a connection for the visitor to the events in a meaningful way. However, an object alone is not enough as a site of memorial. The memories and the intangible feelings that surround the object allow the event to transcend temporal and generational borders. Just because the asphalt was removed, it cannot remove what Michael’s death means to everyone impacted by his murder. The absence of the asphalt allows room for reflection on the importance of his death whether it is on a personal level or on a larger socio-historical level. In this way, we are reminded time and time again of how memories are made with the synergy of the physical and the intangible, which then becomes one set of tools for us to enact change.
Asphalt is an engineering material that dates back to the Sumerians and the Egyptians. It’s a mixture of various rock-based compounds that are brought together to form a strong, weather and chemical resistant material that we coat the Earth with to sustain our livelihood in a multitude of ways. It not only contains the histories of the rocks that make up the asphalt, but also the histories of the humans whose labor formed these materials to create societal structures. In a similar way, memorialization is a mixture. As an activity, it is a way in which we remember a specific event or a person. As an object, it serves as a springboard for difficult discussions about the event that it remembers.
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It’s been six years already since Michael Brown’s death. Six years is not enough to dismantle systemic racism - as we’ve seen with the most recent murders of George Floyd, Breonna Taylor, and countless others. To that end, what are the implications of memorializing the death of Black people brought on by societal injustices for present and future generations?
The death of Black people as a result of white supremacy is not an isolated issue. Because of white supremacy’s ubiquitous nature, it is a problem that affects the greater nation and the world. The ways in which each person is impacted by white supremacy is different. For some it is life or death and for others it is an impactful but fleeting moment. It is important to remember that these incidents are connected so we must fight injustices collectively, and memorialization is just one way in which we can do so.
How we memorialize these deaths will affect what world we leave for future generations. Our memorialization of each of these unjust deaths must include action. We can use memorials as a way to convince those with privilege to observe, change, and act in solidarity with Black lives that are at stake every single day. Memorials must be created with a flexible model so that they acknowledge the trauma that may be provoked in certain communities. Their trauma must be taken into consideration when building any sort of physical memorial whether it is in the form of monuments or artist’s work.
Memorials must serve a multitude of nuanced needs. As tangible, inanimate objects they cannot speak for the ones they are created to remember. They rely on the people around them to rise up to the work of dismantling oppressive systems and imagining radical futures. The fluidity in memorialization allows room for the hope that one day, memorials can heal, right, and celebrate triumph over the injustices that the past generations could not overcome and ensure that every voice is heard and treasured.
About Our Writer
Sophia Park is a writer and curator based in Brooklyn, NY. She studied neuroscience at Oberlin College, where she conducted research in neurotoxicology. She’s worked at The Metropolitan Museum of Art, and currently works on the Fractured Atlas External Relations team. She is also a co-director and curator at Jip Gallery, a curatorial collective based in NYC. You can find her writing on Strata Mag, Womanly Mag, and Monument Lab.
“…writing his dream inside a rectangle.”
work by Ashley M. Freeby
[ artist statement ]
The poetic gesture behind the removal and replacement of a site where a traumatic event occurred has initiated this work. A vast chasm of memory for the one lost, "...writing his dream inside a rectangle." is an exploration of the story behind the location at Canfield Drive (38.738360, -90.273701). In a minimalist form, 950 pounds of hand painted gravel takes on the trauma's abyss in a 8x20 foot rectangular floor piece. The labor put forth is an action by myself to communicate the void of absence - mixed and adhered with presence in a deep immeasurable space.
The title for the work comes from James Baldwin’s obituary. Otto Friedrich, a friend of Baldwin, wrote the words and recalled a story from Paris when he was writing Baldwin's obituary for Time magazine. He wrote “...he would occasionally take out a ball-point pen and start drawing a large rectangle on what was left of a beer-stained paper tablecloth. Inside the rectangle he would slowly write, ...the dream that enabled him to survive the bleak and penniless early years in Paris, the dream that... really was a novel and would someday make him famous.”1 The shape of the rectangle is a container in which can hold.
www.insidearectangle.com
installation process
Exploring the back-to-Earth monument on Canfield Drive in Ferguson, MO via Google Earth.
Segment 148
[week 6] Segment 148 is dedicated to George Floyd.
This segment will be documented every week to reveal the growth and decay over 7 weeks.
Earth Murmur no. 2 was written by artist Ashley M. Freeby, click here to read Earth Murmur no. 1.