So, this was me today, sitting at my local Starbucks frantically flipping through my severely abused copy of Stéphane Audoin-Rouzeau and Annette Becker's "14-18: Retrouver la Guerre" looking like an over-caffeinated-mildly-psychotic-grad-student attempting to find a particular idea (which likened small village commemoration sculptures [see above image: Kathe Kollowitz's "The Mourning Parents"] to a 'middle ground' area where the individual and national coexisted). An idea that I SWORE I remember reading last year in 14-18. Of course, because well: I'm Anna, it turned out that this idea was actually in Stéphane Tison's book "Comment Sortir de la Guerre *insert gif of woman smacking head repeatedly on desk here*. In my defense though, THEY have the very same first name and THEIR ideas parallel each other, so like, ugh, who is really to blame here?! ... Probably my less than spectacular text organization skills *stares at mounds of paper and books derisively*. But, alas, I digress.
Out of this terrible hour long frenzy came an idea for pop-up exhibit commemorating the Great War. As we slowly approach the centenary of the Great War's close, contemporary commemoration practices move towards looking at the War's aftermath and lasting legacy (*cough* my research area *cough*). In doing so I find myself wondering how nation's will approach this. Looking back on the NUMEROUS, and I do mean NUMEROUS, commemoratory spectales, events, and momuments, that were held in August 2014; I do not doubt November 2018 will see an equal blossoming of commemoratory events marking the end of the War. Where from 2014-Present commemoratory events have centered on the actions of those who participated in the Great War, I begin to think that the commemorations of 2018 will feature how Europe pulled themselves back together through the cultural advents made in the 1920s. The question I kept mulling over was: how will organizations address the need to commemorate the historical players of the Great War as well as their public duty to present factual information about the War in the most immersive way possible. Reflecting on the idea of the Great War as a severed point in history. Yet, remembering that no period is devoid of the societal era that surrounds it, I conceived of a circular room to match the continual flow of history through time (s/o to Graham Smith's Waterland).
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