Drawing from Memory

PROPOSAL

My proposal for the 2023 Roger Martin Travel Prize is an exploration of Japanese landscapes with an interest in sites of memory and memorialization, spaces that preserve or interpret memory, hold trauma, transform through process, celebrate the everyday, and transcend time. My intent for this proposal is to explore these spaces and processes through techniques of drawing and printmaking.

How are landscapes used to reflect individual and collective memory? How can landscapes help—or dictate—what we remember? What are the edges of memory in landscapes where they meet the present?

In Japan, traditional and contemporary symbols of honoring and remembrance are integral to its long history and modern culture. Buddhism and Shintoism have shaped the landscape and culture to consider the past and to hold sacred the present. Torii gateways, for example, ubiquitous structures at shrines across the country, act as symbols of transition from the mundane into the sacred. Contemporary spaces such as the Hiroshima dome and Arahama School Earthquake Memorial, honor the devastating impact of incomprehensible forces, through a strategy of “arrested decay”, preserving the destruction as a message. Beyond the purely physical and monumental forms of memorial, I am interested in ephemeral rituals as processes of honoring or remembering; memorial landscapes that are only fully realized through the process of engagement. I’m excited, too, by moments celebrating the mundane and the everyday, acts of acknowledgment in the service of individual and collective memory, “where the sacred erupts out of the plain everyday.” (Shanken, 2022)

SITES OF MEMORY

What is a site of memory? “Lieu de mémoire” as Pierre Nora defines it is “… any significant entity, whether material or non-material in nature, which by dint of human will or the work of time has become a symbolic element of the memorial heritage of any community." (Nora, 1998) Memory is physical and spatial. Sites of memory acknowledge collective memory through the tangible or ephemeral, through spaces, objects, or rituals with cultural significance to a group of people. There are of course critiques of this idea; that over time the natural production of cultural memories can become homogenized or co-opted towards a nationalistic agenda; or that all things can be considered to hold memory and therefore the concept is redundant. What I find most important about the theory is that it is attached to real spaces and events, and that it suggests memory has the capacity to transform or activate space from something purely physical (“Perceived Space” in the Lefevre-ian trialectic of space) to something animate and alive (what Lefebvre would describe as “Lived Space”). (Lefevbre, 1991) To imbue memory into a space is bring it to life, where “…the additive quality of memorialization, in formal terms and in practice, alters the entire performance of the space in a dance of people, objects, and places” (Shanken, 2022)

Many of the places I plan to visit are considered “memorials” in the traditional sense, but my focus is not exclusively on these spaces, which is why Nora’s “sites of memory” is a more useful term. Memorials or traditional monuments are an interest to me to the extent that they “do something” beyond the inertly physical. How landscapes acknowledge memory, regardless of their classification as a memorial, is most important to me.

Henri Lefevre’s *Spatialized Trialiectic*

** I created this diagram of Henri Lefevre’s Spatial Trialectic for myself in grad school to help remember and understand what can sometimes sound excessively pretentious and overly wordy, but his theories on space form the basis for how many others write and think about sites of memory and are important for the context of this work. Now back to the post -.-

CULTURE OF MEMORY

In Akiko Hashimoto’s writing on Japan's collective memory post WWII, she writes that “the struggle for control over memory is rooted in the conflict and interplay between social, political, cultural interests and values in particular present conditions.” (Hashimoto, 2015). I’m interested in how this conflict of memory plays out in the landscape; what is remembered and what is erased, how narratives of memory are reinvented and interpreted over time. Storytelling is at the forefront of this and the thing that I find most interesting in relation to my own work on memorials, interpretive planning, and cultural landscapes. Sites of memory tell stories through materials, form, ground, light, engagement, and words or messages. They communicate by what they do as much as by what they say. These stories are often communicated through specific cultural cues and symbols that can be difficult to interpret as an outsider. I’m mindful not to project too much on to spaces what my interpretation (or misinterpretation) of the meaning or intent of a site is, but rather documenting as an active observer.

DRAWING FROM MEMORY

This prize was generously created by the University of Minnesota and Martin family to honor the legacy of Roger Martin. The prize at its core is intended to celebrate his love of exploring landscapes through travel and drawing. Drawing is central to my explorations here in Japan and holds a secondary meaning for me in relation to memory. It has always been the way in which I document experience in order to remember and interpret place. Hand drawing, collage, printmaking, photography, writing, and reading/researching are all tools that have allowed me to actively observe and interpret new spaces and to visualize and archive the layers of my experiences. The act of drawing becomes a subjective exploration of my own memory of place.

I’ve brought along a set of embossed pages I created at the printmaking studio that serve as a template for quick site sketching, a grid of 9 small sketches to complete at each site. I am also keeping a series of accordion Sketchbooks as a means to sketch, paint, and collage, to work back into the drawings and add more from memory.

Embossed pages for drawing quick, small sketches on site

Allen Say, a Japanese-American cartoonist, wrote the children’s book Drawing from Memory that I have loved and have been revisiting lately. I love how he collages past and present—sketches, photographs, paintings, and artifacts—all into one story about his childhood and career.

A page from Allen Say’s book *Drawing from Memory*

Printmaking is another drawing process that allows for the compression of time through layering. My experience in printmaking is largely in woodblock relief printing and drypoint intaglio printing on plexiglass, methods that I have used to experiment with representations of time and physical processes. The long-held tradition of woodblock printing in Japan, mokuhanga, used historically as a method for telling stories and documenting history, is particularly interesting to me. Methods like the traditional and tedious practice of ukiyo-e, as well as more contemporary sōsaku-hanga (“creative prints”), are techniques I’m excited to learn more about on the trip and incorporate into my printmaking process when I return from Japan, in preparation for an exhibition of the travels next year.

Prints from there Porta Maggiore series created after a travel fellowship to Rome in 2019 / Drypoint intaglio on thin mulberry

Hokusai, the famous Japanese printmaker active from the late 1700s to mid-1800s in Japan, and more broadly this tradition of creative printing, have been inspiration for me leading up to the trip. I found a book on his “manga” collection (which just means sketches in this context) at a used bookstore in St. Paul. The manga series documents various themes (rocks, water, plants, animals, dancers, mythical figures) which served as references for more formal commissioned drawings he created. (Michener, 1983) The informality of these gestural drawings and the collections and thematic groupings (a whole page of rocks!) are what I love about this work and what I try to inject into my own drawing. His series of single stroke drawings that I got to see recently at the Hokusai museum in Tokyo are one of my favorites of his manga.

Hokusai’s “One Stroke” sketches, I snuck a photo in the museum hence the poor quality….

ITINERARY

Over the last six months I have been slowly gathering and mapping out countless sites to explore, thanks to many suggestions from friends and colleagues and many hours of research. I created the itinerary to give myself a framework for exploration without predetermining what I will discover, leaving room for the inevitable surprises that come with being in a new place.

I am now traveling for the next four weeks, spending three to eight days in each city as I make my way west from Tokyo to Kyoto and Nara all the way to Hiroshima, then back east to Tokyo, stopping in the ancient city of Kanazawa on the way. I’ll be sharing more about my experience in each of these places soon!

BIBLIOGRAPHIES

This bibliography is from my graduate thesis several years ago, but many of the references are relevant to this project. I’ve also included an evolving bibliography of books/theorists/artists I am reading, some of which I reference above if you are interested!

Halbwachs, Maurice, and Lewis A. Coser. On collective memory. Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 2022.

Hashimoto, Akiko. The long defeat: Cultural trauma, memory, and identity in Japan. Oxford University Press, 2015.

Hokusai, Katsushika, and James A. Michener. The Hokusai sketch-books: Selections from the Manga. Tuttle, 1983.

Lefebvre, Henri, and Donald Nicholson-Smith. The production of space. Oxford, OX, UK: Blackwell, 1974.

Nora, Pierre, ed. P. Realms of Memory: Rethinking the French Past. University of Chicago Press, 1998.

Say, Allen. Drawing from memory. New York: Scholastic Press, 2011.

Shanken, Andrew Michael. The everyday life of memorials. Zone Books, 2022.

Yates, Frances Amelia. The Art of Memory. London: The Bodley Head, 2014.

How are landscapes used to reflect individual and collective memory? How can landscapes help—or dictate—what we remember? What are the edges of memory in landscapes where they meet the present?

Between the Lines