Sean Lowry, Cold War Memorial (2013) Thought Projection Over
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Sean Lowry, Cold War Memorial (2013) Thought projection over Bering Strait (168°58'37’W) with visual schema During the Cold War, the Bering Strait marked the physical border between the United States and the Soviet Union. Although it is not possible to physically see the 55 miles across the Bering Strait, as Sarah Palin reminded us in her now infamous September 11 2008 ABC interview ‘…you can actually see Russia from land here in Alaska, from an island in Alaska.’ Beyond the banality of Palin’s command of international relations, it is nonetheless true that there are two islands in the middle of the Bering Strait: Big Diomede (the easternmost point of Russia), and Little Diomede (part of the United States). At their closest point, the two islands are approximately 2.4 miles apart. Given that the horizon is approximately 2.9 miles away at sea level, on a clear day it is indeed possible to see Russia from U.S. territory. The Diomede Islands are however typically blanketed by dense fog. Although geographically remote to key Cold War boundaries such as Berlin, the Korean Demilitarized Zone and the Florida Straits, Little Diomede Island was once the only place from which one could literally see the Soviet Union from U.S. territory. Together with an international border, the International Date Line also separates the islands (at 168°58'37’W). During winter, an ice bridge spans the distance between the two islands, making it possible to walk between the islands. During the Cold War, this space was referred to as the ‘Ice Curtain’. Today, this space, as it freezes and thaws with the seasons, can be potentially reimagined as symbolizing the ephemerally tempered threat of human conflict (both tangible and imagined). In 1987, long distance swimmer Lynne Cox managed to swim from one island to the other, a feat that at the time attracted the congratulatory praise of Mikhail Gorbachev and Ronald Reagan. For some, real potential for détente was somehow symbolically imagined through this crossing. Although the Cold War has since thawed, international relations remain substantially underpinned by its legacy. Accordingly, this Cold War Memorial is designed to remind us of the tangible human cost of the immateriality of fear. This Cold War Memorial is simple. In conceptually marking the intermittently frozen 2.4-mile wide space between the Diomede Islands as a memorial to the dangers of ideologically charged fear, a conceptual object is superimposed over the physical space between the islands. Although, for most people, this memorial will remain beyond the realm of direct sense perception, it is nonetheless hoped that the simple exercise of orienting in thought toward a place that actually exists might vicariously provide both solace and reconsideration of the legacies of conflict. To this end, a supplementary feature is added to assist in this task. Whilst looking at a map of this location, the beholder is invited to imagine a modest sign placed on the western coastline Little Diomede Island. Echoing the iconic facsimile signage at Checkpoint Charlie in Berlin, this sign would declare the ephemeral winter ice bridge between the islands to be a Cold War Memorial. This signage should be imagined as presented in English, Russian and the indigenous Iñupiaq language. Quietly symbolizing a world of forgotten peoples turned inside out by the tectonic reaches of immaterial tensions, the Inupiat peoples are emblematic of all peoples divided or repatriated during the Cold War era (the Indigenous population of Big Diomede Island was wholly relocated by the Soviets to mainland Russia in order to house a military presence whilst Little Diomede still has an Inupiat Inuit population of around 170). From the 1960s onwards (building upon key early twentieth century trajectories), several artists have employed projections of thought as an aesthetic medium. This Cold War Memorial takes its points of departure from Terry Atkinson and Michael Baldwin’s unspecified ‘column’ of air over Oxfordshire; Air Show/Air Conditioning (1966–7), the relationship between physical and political markers implicit in in Dennis Oppenheim’s Annual Rings (1968), the moment of 1:36pm on June 15 1969 in which Robert Barry nominated All The Things I Know But Of Which I Am Not At The Moment Thinking, and art historian Sergiusz Michalski’s descriptions of monuments that seek “invisibility as a way of engendering reflection on the limits of monumental imagery”. It is also informed by the way in which artists such as Teching Hseih have successfully activated the potential of building aesthetic experiences in the mind through documentation. Accordingly, this Cold War Memorial is accessible via the perceptual conduit of this text and an accompanying map. In a manner aesthetically and structurally distinguishable from theory and philosophy, art is a vehicle for communicating ideas experientially. Moreover, this is its key point of difference. Like any nation or superpower, an artwork only exists to the extent that people ‘agree’ that it does. As Art & Language declared in 1968, “things are noticed and attended to not in virtue of some ‘naturally’ obvious assertiveness but in respect of culturally, instrumentally, and materially conditioned discursive activity”. Just as fashion magazines list fragrances that models are supposedly wearing alongside other credits, and uninhabited wilderness provide solace by virtue of our knowledge of its existence, art can provide a vehicle for experiencing ideas that exist beyond direct sense perception. Conceptualism’s implicit suggestion that absence can offer a vehicle for aesthetic content has reshaped the idea of memorializing. Just as Maya Lin’s Vietnam Veterans Memorial (1982) now stands as testament to a previous generation re- imagining of the legacies of war via a framing of absence, this Cold War Memorial represents a conflict made tangible through the collective power of imagination through a thought projection created using only searchable information and mapping technology. Since we are no longer comfortable with the idea of memorialising war through the figure of a triumphant phallus, this Cold War Memorial invites contemplation by instead directing our imagination toward an ephemerally present physical location. Given the complexities of conflict, a paradoxical insight that full comprehension is impossible might then accompany our apprehension of the liminal edges of this memorial as it extends into surrounding North Pacific and Arctic waters. One of its most enduring characteristics of the Cold War was its seeming invisibility. Largely played out beyond the realms of direct sense perception, its underlying raison d'être was that of a deployment of an ideologically driven and consensually imagined sense of fear capable of controlling the imaginations of entire civilizations. Visual Schema: .