Images in the sand

I swear, if a body had a mind to it, she could post every day of the year about a different war. Even having a concentration on modern wars involving mass armies of the past couple of hundred years gives one considerable scope.

But today is the 73^rd anniversary of the launch of Operation Overlord, which we mostly know as the D-Day landings. To mark this occasion, I’m sharing one of those installations that use art to examine historical events.

In 2014 we had a spectacular example in the “Blood Swept Lands and Seas of Red” installation at the Tower of London: 888,246 red ceramic poppies falling from a bastion window and filling the dry moat completely. Each poppy represented one dead British or Commonwealth soldier from the 1914-18 war. Individually, the poppies were poignant; in the aggregate they were appalling.

Another example is the AIDS Memorial Quilt, more than 48,000 3’x6’ panels, each representing someone who died of AIDS. And the Paper Clip Project created by children at a middle school in Whitwell, Tenn. They collected six million paper clips to try to wrap their heads around the magnitude of the Holocaust.

In each of these cases, people used art to connect to the otherwise difficult-to-fathom magnitude of loss.

Four years ago two British artists created stencils of the outlines of fallen soldiers, and invited volunteers to etch in the shapes 9000 times on the sand at Arromanches, a flat stretch of sand close to the landing site of Gold Beach. Arromanches was the site of one of the artificial harbors known as Mulberries, used to supply the invaders.

This installation was called The Fallen 9000 because the artists put the number of dead—Allies, Germans and civilians—at 9000 for the first day. Although it’s frankly difficult to pinpoint the actual numbers, 9000 is as good as any for the purpose of making a point. Jamie Wardley and Andy Moss embarked on the project to mark World Peace Day in 2013. Their original team comprised 60 volunteers, but on the day they were joined by another 500 locals. Using the stencils and rakes, they etched 9000 outlines of individual death along the strand.

As I’ve mentioned before, I truly love this kind of installation—not only the intersection of art and history, but the ephemeral nature of the piece. The 560 people on that September day had to work quickly, and within a few hours the water had washed away all their efforts. Kind of like the grass in Carl Sandburg’s poem.

The Fallen | Lest we Forget from Aberration on Vimeo.

Something to think about on this anniversary of sacrifice and perseverance.