ABSTRACT
CONTEMPORARY PUBLIC MEMORIALS are the settings for a very broad and rather surprising range of activities beyond commemoration. At the Diana Memorial Fountain, for example (Figure 1.1), on a warm day, there are people of all ages sitting and lying on the edges of the fountain and the adjacent lawn. Many are barefoot and sit with their feet in the cool running water. Some are in swimwear, others simply have their shirts off and are sunbathing. There are nannies minding children, picnics, and even birthday parties. Here and at other memorials, people use the sculptural forms as chairs and tables or for climbing. They explore these settings’ potentials to support a tremendous variety of body postures and movements: bending, stepping, grasping, running, sliding. Visitors also spend much of their time at these sites looking at other people, rather than at the memorials. Such ways of occupying memorials are surprising when we consider that memorials are typically conceived by their sponsors as solemn, separate places for people to come to remember and honor the people and events being commemorated. Memorial visitors are generally expected to be reverential: to walk slowly, study the memorials’ symbolism, lay floral tributes and engage in other commemorative performances. They might reach out and touch an engraved name. By contrast, the many unanticipated ways of occupying memorials are often unconnected with the people, places and events being commemorated, and may seem distinctly disrespectful to memory.
