A Fragmented Inheritance
In a world where traditional commemorative construction involves the erection of monuments that stand for their clarity, purpose and success, commemorating loss inadvertently announces failure, stirs equivocation, and invites division. The Civilian War Memorial (CWM) in its current state, in both form and texts, reinforces a closure and implied phallic tradition, a representation of victory across multiple fronts that faced the PAP government at the time, condemning and justifying the lack of future memorials. The invisibility of the dead in any shape or form symbolises the unmentionability of the Sook Ching Massacre. It directly avoids confronting and communicating the incommunicability of the suffering the victims, their immediate relatives and their community. The memorial site’s usage and urban condition hinders consistent and ritualistic engagement with the dead.
The thesis aims to highlight this fragility of the monument as one that has lost its physical significance over time and how its original intents and purposes have expired. Subsequently having the intervention uncovering and bringing purpose and meaning back to the memorial. Having its peak of significance during the period of dismantling and subsequent sustained learning journeys, ceremonies, exhumation as well as everyday activities engage the 7 fragmented piaces annually.
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_Supervisor’s comments: While the root for erecting the Civilian War Memorial was about the Chinese victims that died in the Sook Cheng massacre, over time that purpose was overlaid by other agendas - multi-racialism, total defence and National Service. Its physical presence is also challenged by lucrative land potential and development of new iconic buildings ideal for expressing these national aspirations. This thesis is a satire about creating a new narrative for facilitating the transference of a memorial. ‘Reconciliation’ is about establishing more meaningful memoryscapes, connecting the fragments of the memorial to the 7 historical sites that witnessed the horror of war. The thesis illustrated a celebrated ephemerality and the perceived permanence in the context of a land scarce place.
_Supervisor’s comments: While the root for erecting the Civilian War Memorial was about the Chinese victims that died in the Sook Cheng massacre, over time that purpose was overlaid by other agendas - multi-racialism, total defence and National Service. Its physical presence is also challenged by lucrative land potential and development of new iconic buildings ideal for expressing these national aspirations. This thesis is a satire about creating a new narrative for facilitating the transference of a memorial. ‘Reconciliation’ is about establishing more meaningful memoryscapes, connecting the fragments of the memorial to the 7 historical sites that witnessed the horror of war. The thesis illustrated a celebrated ephemerality and the perceived permanence in the context of a land scarce place.
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