With ANZAC Day just passing on this Saturday and with it being the centenary it was fitting for Paul Gough to talk to us a couple weeks ago about memorialisation.

When a space becomes a place it becomes involved/endowed with human memory. With memorials being related to emptiness as they show and remember what has been gone. Paul made an excellent point that the emptiness in memorials ain’t empty they are layered in absence and emptiness.

A key question we explored was why do we have memorials?

A place to remember the dead, people who have passed
Focal point of grief
Place of ritual
I think also for War memorials there is a notion of “Never again”

I think a telling sign of how fundamental it is that we have memorials is the fact that after WWII they didn’t want hospitals or more functional services they wanted memorials, they wanted a place to grieve, to remember the people who they had lost. Perhaps its part of our need for “closure” and it connects us with humanity, the people who have come before us. It’s a reflection of our history.  I think there is this fear of being forgotten, I think we all want to leave our mark on the world and this may be in respect to people who have come before to say that we appreciate you and we will remember you.