Wednesday, September 22, 2010

Been Doing Some Reading

"The AIDS Memorial Quilt and the Contemporary Culture of Commemoration" - Carole Blair and Neil Michel

Explores the issue of public vs. private commemoration (especially in terms of government sanctioned and grass-roots supported memorials). The most interesting and most important for me in this article is Blair and Michel's discussion of how the AIDS quilt and the VVM are multimodal memorials that invite audiences (users) to interact with the memorial itself. The AIDS quilt has panels that are made with various materials and often not made by family members or those one would think would be responsible for doing the memorial. The VVM, although linear and simply lists names, visitors often leave momentos behind that are for commemoration. This allows those if grief more agency in commemorating those they have lost.

"Transcendance at Yellowstone Educating a Public in an Uninhabitable Place" - Gregory Clark
Clark discusses the educational possibilities of a "public experience," much like visiting a national park. What makes this interesting is the discussion of a collective public experience. People from all over the world, with varying backgrounds and experience come together to experience the same thing, but obviously in different ways. Coming together actually allows people to move past their differences.

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