Genocide Remembrance and Prevention Network
Wugga
Folx,
The Genocide Remembrance and Prevention Network (GenNet) is looking for a
portrait of an Unknown Victim of Genocide. The work will serve as the core of a
Genocide Virtual Memorial commemorating all victims of genocide. The work
should convey the full impact of genocide without being sensational.
Unfortunately, GenNet cannot offer compensation beyond attribution and a place
for the artist's statement or biography.
Any takers?
Ewen Allison
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Guidance for Artists offering Portraits of the Unknown Victim of Genocide
The suggestions below are meant only to inspire a grasp of what we are looking
for. The Steering Committee decided against listing mandatory requirements for
the Portrait of the Unknown Victim of Genocide. While the Portrait would
presumably feature a single person, the Committee trusts that a list of strict
requirements would not be necessary, and might even stifle the creative
process. We feel that artists need only be offered suggestions of what the
work would ultimately feature. Then, hopefully, an artist's intuition would
somehow find the most important thread and amplify it perfectly in a way we
could not imagine.
Accordingly, candidate works need not include all elements or reconcile
different viewpoints.
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From the minutes of the March 26 Launching Teleconference:
The conferees discussed how to choose an actual image. Steve [Albert] stated
that the image must enable the viewer to envisage the impact of genocide
without shocking him . . . .
Jean-Claude [Mporamazina] agreed with Lina [Anani] that whatever image was
chosen should be specific to genocide and should allow communities to feel some
sense of ownership.
Lina [Anani] suggested a silouette of an unnamed victim and something like
empty shoes. Others recalled seeing displays of shoes at other memorials.
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Ewen Allison remarks:
I'd add that some other multiple but intimate image besides shoes might work as
well, and would avoid duplication with Holocaust memorials. Also, that the
image of shoes appears at such memorials would perhaps suggest a focus on the
Holocaust, which, well, we don't want to do.
(It's no matter that my opinion conflicts with Lina's -- we could leave it to
the artist's judgement whether to include shoes or not, and perhaps the image
would be so good that I'd defer on this point.)
Also, I think a standing but stooped figure, with the head bent forward in
sorrow, would be especially moving.
I don't think that there should be more than two or three main elements in the
image as a whole.
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Craig Etcheson remarks:
I'd shy away from the shoes, though. That one is sort of taken, and we don't
want to "wear out" that symbol, or turn it into a cliche.
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Bernie Hamilton remarks:
I spent a long time studying the children's tiles in the DC Holocaust Museum
when researching a logo for the Leo kuper Foundation. [I ended up going to
Landor Associates, but think it was a very useful exercise.
I saw a very effective book cover, I think on a book about Yugoslavia. It
depicted burnt out buildings around a town square in the background downhill,
with an old man stooped beneath his bundle, together with a cart loaded with
belongings in the foreground. It was done in red and black. . . .
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MISSION STATEMENT
Our mission is twofold: the remembrance and prevention of genocide. Mindful
of the immeasurable suffering visited on humanity by this crime of crimes, we
seek to keep alive the memory of genocide victims. We hope to restore voice to
those who have been permanently silenced and to bear continuing witness to the
sad reality of past genocides. We do not hold one historical event or one
suffering as worse than another, but seek to include all of those affected by
the various past and present genocides.
Mindful moreover that all persons have within them the capacity for incredible
evil as well as for doing good, we seek to tap the good within all and channel
it toward preventing and suppressing genocides worldwide. While our efforts
begin with The Genocide Virtual Memorial, we continue to use the Internet and
other means to transform outrage into action. We hope to achieve this partly
by linking people and organizations, by learning from a diversity of experience
and expertise and by building partnerships in the prevention of genocide. We
seek also to increase awareness, provide information, and identify early
warning signs of genocide.
Wugga
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"Men who take up arms against one another in public war do not cease on this
account to be moral beings, responsible to one another and to God." Abraham
Lincoln, General Orders 100, April 24, 1863.