Commemorations: Towards an Architecture of Reckoning

COMMEMORATIONS

TOWARDS AN ARCHITECTURE OF RECKONING Mark Ignacio Wilson

© 2021 Mark Ignacio Wilson

COMMEMORATIONS

happen in a moment happen over a life time happen alone happen together happen in silence happen in light happen in darkness happen in fear happen inside happen outside happen with architecture happen without it happen

in places.

in actions.

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

To Bradley Walters, for your tireless, thoughtful and honest mentorship for the length of my education; to Charlie Hailey, for your wealth of knowledge and your generosity, kindness in sharing it; to Mark McGlothlin, for teaching me to always scare myself, for your presence, you've seen me grow; to Nina Hofer, for your warm and accepting nature, your engaging and insightful challenges; to Will Zajac and Lisa Huang, for filling my spirit with confidence and wonder; to the UF School of Architecture, for an education that has given me a sense of belonging and shown me my place in this world; to my studio mates: Clay, James, Liz, Lisa and Kristen, you've provided me comfort, joy, knowledge and friendship; to Molly, my best friend, the best collaborator and partner I could ask for; to my parents, for their constant support, love and prayers;

I thank you all.

AN ORIGIN STORY

It was in the courtyard of the Castelvecchio in Verona, Italy when I first heard this project calling. It was cold as usual, I held my sketchbook tightly in my hands. I was eager to draw this beautiful place. Tightly gathered in the courtyard, I listened to Professor Zajac tell the story of this storied space. He spoke of who lived here and what they did. He spoke of a history buried in the urban earth and hidden in behind old walls. He explained that Carlo Scarpa came to this place and, using architecture, he peeled back the shrouds of history layer by layer.

“What do you think?” he asked, as we both looked around.

Zajac stopped speaking and we slowly went on to the next point of interest before we broke for the day. Zajac, who was sick at the time, lagged behind. His presence grabbed me and I walked next to him. We walked in silence and looked at this masterpiece that Scarpa made many years ago. It had its own history now.

“Yes! Archeology,” he repeated back to me. “I love that word.”

“I think it is beautiful.” I said nervously. The starts of our conversations we’re always on nervous grounds.

He nodded in approval.

“It is like archeology.” I added to fill the silence.

Zajac’s eyes lit up in the way that they do. His sick self was alive, if only for a moment.

Satisfied with the simplicity of this label, we went our separate ways and sketched what we saw.

I was that moment when I knew what my thesis would be about. I felt so inspired by Scarpa’s archaeological spaces. Spaces so in touch with their history, yet so transformative to me the visitor. Past and present are joined; a future emerges. It was the story and the detail and me: the curious listener.

It was in this thought that a question appeared: can a space like this exist in America?

12

13

“What has been will be again, what has been done will be done again; there is nothing new under the sun.”

Ecclesiastes 1: 9-10

WILSON | COMMEMORATIONS

CONTENTS

14

17

Abstract

21

The Haunted South

37

SATURATING

39

Folksongs, the Poetics of the Past

43

Constructing the Narrative

65

Material as Witness

71

EXCAVATING

73

Archeology as Drawing

85

Carving Complicated Ground

89

Collecting Objet Trouves

Mark Ignacio Wilson Master of Architecture | Class of 2021 Graduate Advisors

Critics

Bradley Walters (Chair)

Nina Hofer

Charlie Hailey (Co-Chair)

Nancy Clark

table of contents

95

EMBODYING

97

I am but a Pilgrim

123

Conjuring the Past

127

Translating the Past

141

The Atonement of Truth

151

MEMORIALIZING

153

The Tectonics of Commemoration

167

The Virtue of the Unexpected

171

A Catalog of Commemorations

183

Artifice and Edifice

187

A Monument to Time

209

a commemoration is

215

Bibliography

15

WILSON | COMMEMORATIONS

16

Square photograph series of rural North Florida, taken from 2017-2020.

abstract

ABSTRACT

Architecture holds the unique ability to uncover the hidden intensities of a charged context. By composing the perceptive tools of light, scale and material, an intervention can establish profound connections across time and space. By harnessing the storytelling potential of material, architecture can stimulate an emotional awareness of the forgotten histories of a site. The directed use of these perceptive and communicative tools results in the re-synthesis of place and person, facilitating an empathetic understanding of self, history and the human condition; an understanding of where one has come from and where they might be going.

America has a complicated relationship with its past.

Certain moments of triumph or tragedy are celebrated, while others are intentionally concealed and forgotten.

American history is contained and communicated through inadequate mediums, important truths have been left behind, buried deep in the ground, leading to the societal divisions that plague America today. This research focuses on two important flashpoints of racial violence in North Florida: The Rosewood Massacre of 1923 and the Newberry Six Lynchings of 1916. These cases of racial tension are throughlines that guide us to the disparities and violence seen to this day. While the traditional understanding of history neglects to recount these narratives, the lost stories of victims are forever held within their landscapes and artifacts which are waiting to be justly brought to attention.

It is the position of this research that architecture can be used as a tool to uncover and re-engage these accounts, facilitating a personal encounter with history.

Through architectural and personal engagement, the Southern landscape can become active again, telling the stories of its complicated ground. This research intends to present an commemorative architectural process can lead to ackowledgement, reparation and memorialization in places of trauma. Perhaps bringing forth a place to truly reckon with where America have come from and what work still needs to be done.

17

18

Square photograph also contain photographs taken as part of this research.

19

"Living in the South means being both nourished and wounded by the experience. To identify a person as a Southerner is always to suggest not only that her history is inescapable and profoundly formative, but that it is also imperishably present.

Sally Mann, a thousand crossings, 2007 1

1. Sally Mann. 2018. a thousand crossings. Edited by Julie Warnement. New York City: Abrams. 110.

WILSON | COMMEMORATIONS

20

the haunted south

THE HAUNTED SOUTH

"It was on the outskirts of Atlanta that I first felt how the Southern landscape--the trees, the silence, the liquid heat, and the fact that one always seems to be traveling great distances--seems designed for violence, seems, almost, to demand it. What passions cannot be unleashed on a dark road in a Southern night!"

James Baldwin 2 A Quiet Sorrow The South is burdened with the past. It is an inescapable setting that plays out in person, culture and in place.

As Baldwin reflects, the landscape is marked with tortured violence, it seems to silently encourage it.

Its borders are loosely defined, with exception to the Mason-Dixon Line. Episodes of violence have played out over this complicated ground: the eradication of the Native American population, the toils of a slavestate, a war between brethren, conflicts and clashes of culture and race. Between it all is a powerful pride.

The history of America, and a truly perceptible feeling for it, is found in the South. In her photo-essay, Deep South, Virginian photographer, Sally Mann, reflected on this very concept. Between haunting black and white plates of the Southern landscape, Mann wrote that: "Southerners live uneasily at the nexus between myth and reality, watching the mishmash amalgam of sorrow, humility, honor, graciousness, and renegade defiance play out against the backdrop of profligate physical beauty."3

2. James Baldwin. 1961. Nobody Knows My Name: More Notes of a Native Son. New York City: Dial Press. 108.

3. Sally Mann. 2005. Deep South. New York City: Bulfinch Press. 7.

4. Sally Mann. 2018. a thousand crossings. Edited by Julie Warnement. New York City: Abrams. 129.

Mann ponders what is the source of this feeling. She forwards the idea that, like Europe as a continent of conquered nations, the American South is laden with "the lingering sense of defeat". This separates the South from the rest of the United States, as the rest of America is a place of triumph, of wealth, and of unabridged freedom. Only the South has lost.

Both the thoughts of Baldwin and Mann, who represent both sides of the racial divide in the South, point out that: the American South is a stage. It is an active setting, a character in the narrative. To Mann, a conscious white descendant of the oppressor, the Southern landscape is a "backdrop", an "impossibly present" feeling.4 To Baldwin, a descendant of oppressed African slaves, the Southern landscape speaks to its inhabitants with quiet, seductive whispers of violence. He shares a common trauma, past down through generations of African Americans. He cannot look at the formidable Southern oak tree, without envisioning black bodies hanging. Baldwin asks of the trees, "Which of us has overcome his past?" 5 The answer is neither and also all-of-the-above. The ground, the air, the water of the Southern Landscape is saturated with its history. Too saturated is all the black, white or brown people that identify with the land. The Southern peoples are indelibly linked with their landscape. Their personal future is as shared as their past. For this reason, the American South represents a fertile ground: a land open for investigation, for interpretation and for reckoning.

5. James Baldwin. 1961. Nobody Knows My Name: More Notes of a Native Son. New York City: Dial Press. 213.

21

22

23

Careless seems the great Avenger; History's lessons but record One death-grapple in the darkness 'Twixt old systems and the Word; Truth forever on the scaffold, Wrong forever on the throne; Yet that scaffold swats the future, And behind the dim unknown Standeth God within the shadow Keeping watch above His own.

W.E.B. Du Bois, The Souls of Black Folk

6. W. E. B. Du Bois. 1903. The Souls of Black Folks. Chicago: A. C. McClurg.

16.

6

WILSON | COMMEMORATIONS

24

Figure 1. Map depicting locations of Rosewood and Newberry relative to Gaineville, FL and Orlando, FL.

the haunted south

Residues of Racial Terror "Southern trees bear a strange fruit Blood on the leaves and blood at the root Black bodies swingin' in the Southern breeze Strange fruit hangin' from the poplar trees."

Billie Holiday, Strange Fruit 7 Holiday's haunting protest song against the inhumanity of racial violence forever holds the memory of a painful era in American history. Its impactful metaphors depict the horrors of lynching without even mentioning its name. The song illustrates a deep connection between racist violence and the Southern Landscape.

Following the Civil War, a devastated South had to reconstruct its shattered society. More importantly, it had to do so without the structure of a slave-state.

African-Americans, former slaves, who have always been seen as less-than-human, were now equals in the eyes of the Law, a law handed down from the victor to the defeated. It was in theis atmosphere that one of the most violent times in America history unfolded.

Lynching, and other forms of racial terror, became "a vicious tool of racial control in America" and functioned as "primarily a technique of enforcing racial exploitation—economic, political, and cultural".8 Lynching in the South, became a pasttime, a grand spectacle. These acts of killing became retribution for a state left at war, and for a people who felt threatened by their new equals.

7. Billie Holiday. 1937. Strange Fruit. Comp. Abel Meeropol.

8. Equal Justice Initiative. 2018. Lynching in America. Socialology Research , Equal Justice Initiative, Montgomery.

9. Idib.

This lasting wave of violence did not spare Florida.

Florida despite its remoteness, sparse settlements, and relatively low population had one of the highest per capita rates of lynchings between 1880 and 1940.9 Many former slaves who could not take part of the Great Migration to Northern cities due to economic, health, or other reasons, went further South to find paradise in Florida's remote and resource-rich swamps.

Rosewood Massacre Rosewood was one of these settlements. Situated on the east coast of North Florida, Rosewood (Figure 1) was settled in 1880 for it abundance of pine and cedar trees which were harvested for their wood and turpentine. Working class peoples, black and white, came from the more settled towns of Gainesville and Palatka and carved out a small hamlet for themselves.

There, the black population thrived, they purchased land and constructed homes, churches, and stores for themselves. To the locals, they called it "black utopia".10 To the whites, who had moved down the road to Sumner, Rosewood represented a problem.

This black utopia came crashing down in 1923.

Triggered by accusations of a unknown black man assaulting a white women, for seven days the African American population was terrorized, murdered and displaced. The settlement was burned to the ground and its descendants were banished to other parts of Florida. Scholars refer to events like this as a "pogrom", or a " an organized massacre of a particular ethnic group".11 This label defines the event as purposeful, premeditated, and, most importantly, repeatable.

10. Gary Moore. 2015. Rosewood: The Full Story. Columbia, South Carolina: Manantial Press.

11. Merriam-Webster.com Dictionary, s.v. “pogrom,” accessed April 27, 2021.

25

WILSON | COMMEMORATIONS

26

Figure 2. Rosewood Historic Marker. Rosewood, FL. 2021. (Image by Author)

the haunted south

Rosewood's story was largely forgotten until a journalist, Gary Moore, brought it to the attention of CBS's 60 Minutes. This popularization led to a feature film entitled, Rosewood, by prominent Black filmmaker, John Singleton. Eventually, this led to a historical marker that was placed on the side of the state road in 2002.12 Despite its publicity, the only evidence of what happened in Rosewood is the single historic marker.

The actual former land that was once the settlement is hidden behind barbed wire and no trespassing signs. Trucks and motorcycles constantly pass the shallow monument, it is an uninviting place and visitors only stay for a moment (Figure 2). The story of Rosewood and its site of racial terror is calling for more. It is ready to speak its truth to willing listeners.

The Newberry Six Lynchings The story of the Newberry Six is kindred to the one of Rosewood. It is an episode of a contained crime igniting a tinderbox of paranoia, hate, and racism.

It is a story that is actively being commemorated, but perhaps not justly. It is an flash-point of racial terror that is not properly memorialized in the place and community that it happened in.

In 1916, in a small company town directly west of Gainesville, Florida (Figure 1), a group of livestock went missing. Very quickly, the blame was placed at one of the black ranch-hands, Boisy Long. He was confronted by authorities and as Long fled, he shot and killed a constable. Chaos ensued. A black man murdered a white man, and to the white mob that gathered, every black citizen had to pay.

12. Gary Moore. 2015. Rosewood: The Full Story. Columbia, South Carolina : Manantial Press.

13. Cindy Swirko. 2020. Newberry digs for lynching truth. The Gainesville Sun. Web. Gainesville, Florida, February 29. Accessed April 20, 2021.

14. Idib.

Several members of the black community were accused of helping Long escape. To protect them, the local Sheriff arrested them and brought them to the jail.

When the mod gathered around the jail demanding that they be given "justice", the Sheriff, rather than fight for the truth, gave the men and women up. That night, five African Americans were lynched just out of town at a place they still call "Lynching Hammock".

Six people in total were murdered, and to this day, there is no evidence that they had anything to do with Long's escape. Many of the African Americans in the city, fearing continued violence, moved east and formed their own small settlement, Jonestown, where many of their direct descendants remain.13 For decades, this story was covered up, forgotten and silenced. Today, the citizens of Newberry are working to actively remember their shared history. The town has partnered with the Equal Justice Initiative to place historical markers and hold public forums. A historical marker was placed in Jonestown, outside the African Methodist Church where many of the descendants attend. In 2021, the town held a soil digging ceremony at "Lynching Hammock". There, the late University of Florida lecturer, Patricia Hilliard-Nunn, said it best: "The soil collection can put those spirits to sleep." 14 Despite these encouraging steps in both of these sites of racial terrorism, the fact remains: these sites have more to offer than mere historical markers. It is the position and goal of this research to spectate on a more just memorial for the victims of both Rosewood and Newberry.

27

WILSON | COMMEMORATIONS

28

the haunted south

On Positioning It is essential to acknowledge the position of the author of any work of writing, art or architecture. To understand the perspective is to understand the true context of the work. This notion especially holds true when confronting a past as painful and as rich as the one in the South.

One may argue, that the position of the author must be one of interiority: they must be born of the place or into the race. For this research, some of this is true.

This research comes from the perspective of an ethnically ambiguous mixed race male. I was born and raised in the South. Its sentiments run deep in my bones.

But it is never so simple. My mother in an immigrant from the Philippines. American adopted her and she, in turn, adopted it back. My father is a white American, whose father was a deep-rooted Southern man and mother who was a "Yankee". I, born in these Southern States of America, am an American amalgamation.

My influences are as diverse as my roots. I grew up listening to Country music classics in my Father's pick-up truck. The music of Johnny Cash and John Denver connected me to American tradition and pride. Through a quickly globalizing world founded on the Internet, I discovered hip-hop and rap. I listened to conscious rappers like 2Pac, Common, and J-Cole. Their rhymes revealed to me the racial disparities that are as storied as the proud lyrics of Cash. I became exposed and embedded into Black culture, I picked up a basketball and suddenly the faces I saw day to day became more diverse.

Born on "the other side of the tracks", I never felt affluent. In my hometown, the "tracks" is the river. The

rich and white lived on the beach. The poor and white, the black, and the brown lived inland. My neighborhood is situated at the edge between white and black.

Even with the edges between us, cultural, racial and physical, I felt to be under the same caste system.

Raised in the complicated South, I was never allowed to leave it. Throughout my childhood and into my adulthood, I traveled the Southern landscape. I have deeply rooted memories of traveling the winding mountain passes of Appalachia. I have swam in the cold rivers and lakes in the Carolinas. I have walked in the fields of plantations. I have sat in the benches of Savannah and Charleston. My soul feels deeply connected to the South, in all her charm and her evils.

Being racially ambiguous and connected to alternate communities, I have spent much of my life with foot on both side of the edge. I can occupy a truly American space. A space of a multitude identities, but in the same instance, completely an absents of an identity.

This is the American identity that I know, both an insider and an outsider; both everything and nothing at all.

This is my position.

My position offers me a unique vantage point. I can fluidly occupy cultural spaces. I can embody several sides of a conflict or situation. I can see myself as both the oppressor and the oppressed.

This project granted me with the time and the situation to reckon with my position in the American context.

In recognizing that, I felt fearless in working. I felt, from the very start to the last line, truly connected to the work and the people I am speaking for.

29

WILSON | COMMEMORATIONS

30

THIS PROJECT IS DEDICATED TO THE VICTIMS OF THE NEWBERRY SIX LYNCHINGS AND THE ROSEWOOD MASSACRE AND THEIR DESCENDANTS. THIS PROJECT IS A CALL FOR JUSTICE IN THE PLACES OF THEIR IMPORTANT STORIES.

THE NEWBERRY SIX LYNCHINGS of 1916

THE ROSEWOOD MASSACRE of 1923

Stella Young

Samuel S. Carter

Andrew McHenry

Sarah J. Carrier

Reverend Josh J. Baskins

D.P. "Poly" Wilkerson

Mary Dennis

Mary M. Andrews

Bert Dennis

Lexie Gordon

Jim Dennis

H. Sylvester Carrier Mingo Williams James Carrier and many more.15

15. These names only represent confirmed victims of the Rosewood Massacre. Because of the unclear nature of the events and inaccurate census data, a true number of victims cannot be known.

31

32

33

History, despite its wrenching pain, Cannot be unlived, but if faced With courage, need not be lived again.

Maya Angelou, On The Pulse Of Morning 16

16. Maya Angelou. On the Pulse of Morning, Poetry Foundation. Accessed April 26, 2021.

WILSON | COMMEMORATIONS

34

1 SATURATING

2 EXCAVATING

COMMEMORATION 3 EMBODYING

4 MEMORIALIZING

35

this project is organized into four verbs: SATURAT-ING EXCAVAT-ING EMBODY-ING MEMORIALIZ-ING all actions revolving around the act of commemoration

36

1 SATURATING

2 EXCAVATING

COMMEMORATION 3 EMBODYING

4 MEMORIALIZING

(transitive verb) to cause to combine until there is no further tendency to combine 17

SATURATING

17. Merriam-Webster.com Dictionary, s.v. “saturate,” accessed April 27, 2021

37

WILSON | COMMEMORATIONS

38

Figure 3. Diagram placing Folksongs within the spectrum between Ode, Elegy and Ballad. Additionally, understanding the site and site-lessness of these historic narratives.

SATURATING | folksongs

FOLKSONGS, THE POETICS OF THE PAST

“Poetry provides us with a history of the human heart.”

39

Billy Collins 18 America has a poetic soul. It can be see in our history, as long as one is looking for it. This soul is not universal, but it is shared. It is individual and collective. It is inclusive and exclusive.

This project began with an expansive and sprawling search to define that elusive American soul.

The first step of this search was one of collecting.

One of peering back into history through a poetic lens and gathering stories; building an anthology.

This book of folksongs is a collection of seemly self-contained historic narratives, that when brought together begin to reveal a more nuanced and complete vision of American History.

To make sense of this, these stories were placed within a spectrum between poetic forms (see figure 3). This organizational process begins to create a spacial understanding of a poetic American past, providing one with a sense of the historic landscape that one intends to understand.

The poetic forms investigated in this research are as follows: (all definitions are from Billy Collin's Masterclass) 19

ODE A short lyric poem that praises an individual, an idea, or an event.

ELEGY A poem that reflects upon death or loss.

Traditionally, it contains themes of mourning, loss, and reflection. However, it can also explore themes of redemption and consolation.

BALLAD A form of narrative verse that can be either poetic or musical; not all ballads are songs.

Many ballads tell stories, but this is not a mandatory attribute of the form. Many musical ballads are slow and emotionally evocative.

18. Billy Collins. 2020. Poetry 101: What Is Poetic Form? Masterclass, (November 8).

19. Idib.

WILSON | COMMEMORATIONS

FOLKSONGS, RECONSTRUCTED HISTORIES

40

voting, right

a march for freedom

the sea is history

porte du non retour

SATURATING | constructing the narrative

41

strange fruit

rosewood, reconstructed

WILSON | COMMEMORATIONS

42

Figure 4, Rosewood, two details of reconstructed document depict the homes of past and present.

SATURATING | constructing the narrative

CONSTRUCTING THE NARRATIVE

“Through the brilliance of the image, the distant past resounds with echoes…”

Gaston Bachelard 20 A Saturated Document To justly peer into the past requires a lens to look through and an object to look at. Once significant narratives were identified a paramount problem arose: histories are both dense and sparse. They inhabit the both the past and the present. History often only speaks of a singular perspective, even though they are constituted of several. So, how can conflicting timescapes and accounts be flattened into one understandable document? Could this document balance between readability and the ambiguous layering that occurs when disparate parts are brought together?

How to develop a method of analysis became the essential task. Rather than having an answer to these tall tasks, a method presents a way in which these questions could be worked towards. The architectural exercise of collage intuitively appeared as the ideal method to work the above issues.

Collage is a hermeneutic task to “read the text already written” 21 and reveal underlying relationships, as Ignasi de Solà-Morales would describe it. To uncover these hidden relationships, the myriad of disparate sources need to be superimposed upon one another. Solà-Morales continues,

20. Gaston Bachelard. The Poetics of Space (New York: The Penguin Group, 1964.) 2.

21. Ignasi de Solà-Morales. Differences. (Cambridge: The MIT Press, 1996.)

98.

22. Idib. 66.

“Only a task of deconstruction, a work of analysis and comprehension of the processes of juxtaposition, is capable of elucidating certain relationships.” 22 The assignment became: deconstruct the past’s narrative to re-construct a new one. This reconstructed history could speak through the medium of the brilliant image that Bachelard wrote of: images, quotes, maps; evidence brought together into a new, resounding image.

A Diversity of Times This new narrative, held within the new image, is interpretation of the past, fit for the present, and prophetic of the future; a superimposition of a “diversity of times”.23 Through this folding of time into a two dimensional space, the past and present may begin to resonate with one another. For example, in a reconstruction focused around the Rosewood story (Figure 4), an image of a burning home from the event (on right), is juxtaposed with an image of the home built on a reparations fund for the descendants of the murdered (on left). Elements of matching typologies stretching from past to present move from occupying a hidden conceptual plane to inhabiting the same physical plane. These “untapped reverberations” are communicating across time “to give a future to the past” as Gaston Bachelard wrote.24 The result: an amalgam of timescapes constructed of historical fragments and offered as a readable document saturated with emotion, place, time and morality.

23. Idib. 67.

24. Gaston Bachelard. The Poetics of Space (New York: The Penguin Group, 1964.) xxi.

43

WILSON | COMMEMORATIONS

44

Porte du Non Retour, narrative collage.

SATURATING | constructing the narrative

The Law of Attraction The collage methodology is an archaeological exercise: one of investigation, collection, protection and interpretation. Historical artifacts: images, quotes, newspaper clippings, letters, art, and maps, information factual or false are gathered together.

This collecting act works to protect the individual historical fragments and the stories that they radiate.

Using two-dimensional space as spatial field, the artifacts are placed in particular alignments, distances and overlaps to construct a map of the story. Rather than letting these fragments sit within the discrete spaces that the one occupied, this hermeneutic method uses the law of attraction to interpret preexisting relationships and make them visible, readable and communicative. Therefore, this new image becomes a “tool for describing” the past.25 And while this image is a factual history, it too is an emotive history. Color, shape, composition work in tandem with words, faces and body to communicate the emotion of these stories. This emotional connection holds the potential to allow not only one’s mind but heart to enter the world of the past and the silence of a forgotten history begins to speak.

25. Ignasi de Solà-Morales. Differences. (Cambridge: The MIT Press, 1996.)

64.

45 The following pages recount and illustrate the process of reconstruction that occurred as part of this research. As these collages were created as reconstructions, these document serves to deconstruct.

The historical fragments are taken back out of the collages and their sources are revealed. By doing so, the reconstructed histories project a new narrative, one of investigation and research; a visual bibliography (see page 44) for all to read, learn and understand.

WILSON | COMMEMORATIONS

COLLAGE 46

6

2

8

1

3 4

9

Porte du Non Retour, narrative collage bibliography.

10

7 5

SATURATING | constructing the narrative

SOURCES 1 | The Door of No Return on the beach of Ouidah, Benin.

Illigen, Luise, Door of No Return, 2016, Web, Ouidah, Benin.

2 | President Obama and First Lady Michelle Obama look out the Door of No Return at Goree Island in Senegal in 2013.

Loeb, Saul, AFP/Getty Images, Obama at the Door of No Return, 2013, Web, Goree, Senegal.

3 | 65.3, Drawing on Slave Ship at Sail.

porte du non retour 6 | 65.6, Up close with the Door of No Return on Goree Island in Senegal.

7 | 65.7, Pamphlet circulated in Stokes County, North Carolina in 1836. (image courtesy of North Carlina Collection.)

8 | 65.8, the governors quarters at Cape Coast Castle in Ghana. (photo by James Robb)

4 | 65.4, The Interior of a Slave Ship, Brookes, published in 1788.

9 | 65.9, The Door of No Return in Elmina, Ghana.

Interior of Slave ship, Vigilante.

Retrieved from the Digital Public Library of America

(Photo by Janet Gross)

5 | 65.5, Slaves for sale in the Rotunda, New Orleans. Engraved by William Henry Brooke in 1842.

10 | 65.10, Jamestown, VA where American colonists first received African slaves in 1619.

Brooke, William Henry, Sale of Estates, Pictures and Slaves in the Rotunda, New Orleans, 1842.

(photo by Matt McClain / The Washington Post)

47

WILSON | COMMEMORATIONS

COLLAGE CONSTRUCTION SEQUENCE 48

1 SUPERIMPOSE

2 TRACE

Sources are collaged to create a document saturated with historical substance.

Registrations are traced and pull from the collage.

1

2

3

4

SATURATING | constructing the narrative

porte du non retour 49

3 EXPAND

4 RE_INSTILL

Lines are used to inform a masking layer. Additional information is layered into the composition.

Quotes, titles, and poems are loaded into the document to make the intentions more clear.

5

6

7

8

WILSON | COMMEMORATIONS

COLLAGE CONSTRUCTION SEQUENCE 50

1

2

3

4

SATURATING | constructing the narrative

a march for freedom 51

5

6

7

8

WILSON | COMMEMORATIONS

COLLAGE CONSTRUCTION SEQUENCE 52

1

2

3

4

SATURATING | constructing the narrative

the sea is history 53

5

6

7

8

WILSON | COMMEMORATIONS

COLLAGE CONSTRUCTION SEQUENCE 54

1

2

3

4

SATURATING | constructing the narrative

voting, right 55

5

6

7

8

WILSON | COMMEMORATIONS

COLLAGE CONSTRUCTION SEQUENCE 56

For Rosewood, narrative collage.

Photoshop overlay-ed on satellite map of Rosewood.

1

2

3

4

SATURATING | constructing the narrative

rosewood 57

For Rosewood, narrative collage (DETAIL) Inversion and zoom in reveals overlay of historic structures in 1920 upon satellite map of Rosewood today, 2020.

5

6

7

8

WILSON | COMMEMORATIONS

COLLAGE CONSTRUCTION SEQUENCE 58

Strange Fruit, FLAT narrative collage

1

2

3

4

SATURATING | constructing the narrative

strange fruit 59

Strange Fruit, FOLDED narrative collage with context

5

6

7

8

WILSON | COMMEMORATIONS

60

SATURATING | constructing the narrative

61

WILSON | COMMEMORATIONS

62

SATURATING | constructing the narrative

63

WILSON | COMMEMORATIONS

64

SATURATING | material as witness

MATERIAL AS WITNESS

The Earth is saturated with history.

65

Nature is a witness to the actions, just or evil, of humanity.

Nature outlives human memory.

The trees, the soil, the grass are observant creatures.

Our natural brothers and sisters are a record waiting to be read.

Essential to developing a process to commemorate a memory in places, is to slow down and listen to the place. It is the position of this research that listening is best done through establishing a connection between material and the body.

Professor of History of Art and Architecture at the GSD, Yukio Lippit wrote that materials/objects hold a power to manifest “modes of meaning in the world, dispositions of thought and comportment.”26 To him, the body and therfore the soul identifies with materials. To reconfigure these identifications is to produce new and profound modes of meaning.

This notion was a result of developing a process of listening to natural materials. This took to form of embedding found objects from the sites of trauma and embedding them into a receving material (see page 64). This process yielded textural and sculptural masses, unique to the found object that was recovered from the site. These new objects hold the potential from bodily identification with the history of a place. Nature begins to speak.

26. Yukio Lippit. Understanding Culture through Material Artifacts. Office of the Vice Provost for Advances in Learning. Harvard. Accessed April 27, 2021.

WILSON | COMMEMORATIONS

LISTENING TO MATERIAL 66

1 FOUND

2 DISPLACED

Natural material, like this bark from an oak tree at the Newberry site, is found in situ.

The historical material is brought to studio where it is cast into a receiving material.

SATURATING | material as witness

67

3 EMBEDDED

4 REVEALED

The historical material is nested in the receiving mass.

The mass is separated into fragments, exposing the historic material and the textures that they impressed into the receiving material.

68

69

Surely the people is grass.

Isaiah 40:7

70

1 SATURATING

2 EXCAVATING

COMMEMORATION 3 EMBODYING

4 MEMORIALIZING

71

(transitive verb) to expose to view by or as if by digging away a covering 27

EXCAVATING

27. Merriam-Webster.com Dictionary, s.v. “excavate,” accessed April 27, 2021.

WILSON | COMMEMORATIONS

72

Figure 5, Peeling back the layers of a historical landscape.

EXCAVATING | archeology as drawing

ARCHEOLOGY AS DRAWING “The historian’s distortion is more than technical, it is ideological…”

Robert Zinn 28 History has a tendency to tell lies. "The history is right perhaps, but let us not forget, it was written by the victors." wrote Alexis Guignard de Saint-Priest in 1844.

This sentiment, and others like it, are often credited to Winston Churchill and uttered commonly in popular culture as, "History is written by the victors." 29 Churchill represents the ultimate victor who wrote his own version of history about the very idea of who writes the history.

It is the ultimate example of an ideological bending of the truth. Someone is always to gain by controling history. In all senses, this story promotes that to know a true history of an event, one is going to have to dig for it. One has to uncover the ideological fallacies that history holds, to do so takes an archaeological process.

Within the domain of this research, this archaeological approach became activated through drawing. Using a system of masking and cutting, a drawing can begin to play out the process in which the truth is hidden, offering a conceptual ground to dig into. This physically took the form of vellum sheets layered onto the "folksong reconstructions". Each layer took the role of a particular mode of history-making (see page 78). Using the knife as a tool to cut into the layers, the masks are pulled up, revealing the "truth" below (see figure 5).

Through this masking methodology, the ideological negationism, revisionism and reparation of history can be simulated; drawing becomes a tool to uncover history.

28. Zinn, Howard. A People's History of the United States. New York, NY: Harper, 2017. 8.

29. Matthew Phelan. ‘History Is Written by the Victors’ Was Not Written by the Victors. Slate Magazine. Slate, November 27, 2019.

73

WILSON | COMMEMORATIONS

COLLAGE CONSTRUCTION SEQUENCE 74

1

2

3

4

1 SUPERIMPOSE

2 FOLD

Sources are collaged to create a document saturated with historical substance.

Collage is folded into three-dimensional space speculating towards habitation and scale.

EXCAVATING | archeology as drawing

75

5

6

7

8

3 EXPAND

4 DISTILL

Folded collage is expanded making room for public engagement.

Information is pulled forward layer by layer from the folded document.

WILSON | COMMEMORATIONS

MASK CHARACTERS 76

1 BASE

2 THE WORKER

The voting volume, the act of voting as a spectacle. A public celebration of democracy.

The essential volunteer, a celebrator of democracy. A welcoming and directing body.

Enclosing horizontal elements set stage for a popular occupation.

Massive volumes and diaphanous banners hold a welcoming pre-function space.

EXCAVATING | archeology as drawing

77

3 THE VOTER

4 THE INTIMIDATOR

The American populace, the common citizen with an uncommon task: deciding the collective future.

The voter suppressor, a poll watcher, a distrusting soul, a barrier to democracy.

The voting space breaks down to the bodily scale. The intentions of the space is seen from the exterior; voting becomes an event.

A walkable plane hovers over the voters. Veils come in from the side, enclosing the voting space, elements build a temporal pressure.

WILSON | COMMEMORATIONS

THE SEED 78

Voting Rights, layered collage. Photograph of vellum composite over light table.

EXCAVATING | archeology as drawing

79

Voting Rights, collage and mask composite.

As a result of this exercise, the narrative is interpreted into a saturated document with ambiguous but direct spatial implications. This image is a seed, ready to be sowed and transformed into an experiential embodiment of the voting right folksong.

WILSON | COMMEMORATIONS

MASK CHARACTERS 80

1 THE NEGATIONIST

2 THE REVISIONIST

A true denier of history, the negationist, works to hide the truth.

An relentless seeker of the truth, the revisionist, cuts through the fog of the negationist, digging for a just understanding of the story.

Within this story, ground in which the buried remains of Rosewood are masked over. The old road that serviced the town is condemned. A new state road cuts through the forest North of the former towns center. The story of Rosewood is passed over. A new town, a collection of typical Florida homes with ample yards and privacy, is constructed just West of the forgotten city.

In Rosewood, the forgotten town is rediscovered.

Welding the knife, as a tool of uncovering, the Revisionist cuts through the cloud of confusion. The old town, shining symbol of Black independence and the atrocities of America, is revealed to a curious nation.

EXCAVATING | archeology as drawing

81

3 THE REPARATIONIST

4 THE ORATOR

A empathetic healer, the reparationist, is moved by the human stories held in their history and works to repair the sins of their ancestors.

A storyteller and keeper of an oral history, the Orator, announces to community the lessons of the past. Their myths, true or embellished, act as a moral compass for the community.

Listening to the discoveries of the Revisionist, the healer seeks to balance the past by building a better future.

The forgotten landscape where of former Rosewood is openly acknowledged and linked to the present town.

The plots where Rosewood’s proud residents once stood are cleared. Their descendants are given the land of their ancestors. They are given funds to establish a new town, they can finally create the American Dream that they’re forefathers intended to make.

In Rosewood, the Orator constructs monuments that act as vestiges to the lineage of the new community.

The speaker and their tools tell the whole truth, the tragedies and the triumphs of this remote corner of the Earth and how a brave group of former slaves founded, built and died to protect their blessings.

WILSON | COMMEMORATIONS

DIG SITES 82

Dig Sites, swaths of land, discovered through the mask method are isolated for closer examination.

This process of constructing a historical document then masking and distilling those constructions down provided a new map of Rosewood. This map reveals a set of "micro-contexts" held within the "marco-context". This was a process of narrowing down a place into manageable swaths.

Each one of these swaths of charged landscapes, can be called "dig sites", each deserving study and consideration, each site ripe for intervention. A set of re-contextualizing figures mark the landscape developing a re-sythesis with the past. Visitors, citizens can move between them, learning a personal understanding of the history of this charged place.

EXCAVATING | archeology as drawing

83 A

F

B

G

C

H

D

I

E

J

WILSON | COMMEMORATIONS

84

Figure 6, hand drawn map of Lynching Hammock in Newberry, Florida.

EXCAVATING | carving complicated ground

CARVING COMPLICATED GROUND

Excavation is a profane act. It requires the removal of soil. What was once pure and untouched, is now forever altered.

Can excavation ever be justified?

Is the land truly sacred?

The Southern ground, specifically the grounds of Rosewood and Newberry have witnessed profane acts; it is a complex ground. The soil was steeped in blood, it trees were used as weapons; natural scaffolding for an evil deed.

The profanity has already occurred, the landscape is sacred no more.

The most profane act would be to forget what happened in these places.

So, can we carve?

— On a site visit in February, I wanted to get a sense of the scale of Lynching Hammock in Newberry. Not owning a tape measure long enough to measure the site, I used the only thing I always had with me: my body. I started at the northeast corner of the site and paced from one landmark to another, marking the journey and the measurement on a sheet of watercolor I brought with me (see figure 6). In the end, I had a complete map. Whatever I was to do, at least I knew how big it would need to be.

85

86

Figure 7, Model of carved ground at Lynching Hammock.

EXCAVATING | carving complicated ground

The Newberry site called from shelter. Unwilling to compete with the canopy provided by the oak trees, the ground begged for digging.

The ground provoked wonder. One began to imagine the roots of the lost hanging tree that was removed from the site decades ago.

Using the measurements from the site visit, the landscape of the Lynching Hammock was reconstructed in studio. In the way that the actual site begged to be carved, so did the model (see figure 7). The land demanded a violent act.

Seductive as it is, something felt wrong about this exercise. Perhaps it was too profane. The land felt tortured again, just as it was one hundred years ago.

The land had become sacred again. Nature always recovers, it repairs. It is the responsibility of architecture to bring awareness to that fact, rather than replace it.

Humanity must not carve the land.

Humanity must allow itself to be carved by it.

87

WILSON | COMMEMORATIONS

88

Figure 7, soil collection held at the former property of the Carter family. It is now an empty lot adjacent to a Dollar General and a seafood restaurant.

Rosewood, FL.

EXCAVATING | collecting objet trouves

COLLECTING OBJET TROUVES

"For me, this has little to do with the real things I experience on a site or in a landscape. As an architect, I am interested in the history that is stored and accumulated in landscapes, places and things.

The things I can see and feel in the landscape are physical and real, no matter how mute, hidden, and mysterious they might at first appear."

important sites (see figure 7). These natural artifacts 89 were originally were to be displayed in a traditional gallery sense. This would of been the more "Zumthorian" path. However, these found objets became more.

They transformed into tools to shape a history-bound space.

Peter Zumthor 30 In his book, A Feeling for History, Peter Zumthor works to explain how he wants his architecture to connect to a way to feel history. But to him, this is achieved through an indefinable, spiritual connection. He argues that: History has a substance, and "nothing is more powerful than the historical substance itself".31 They are the substance in which people can begin to identify with a setting.

In visiting the sites of racial trauma in North Florida, it was important to find these artifacts, to study them, and bring them to others.

The 19th century French term, Objet Trouve, literally translates to "found object" and is defined as "a natural or discarded object found by chance and held to have aesthetic value".32 Throughout this research, finding, collecting, organizing and using these "salvaged pieces" and "fragments of the past" 33 became a primary activity in Rosewood and Newberry. Not having an idealist man-made artifact to find, these objets took the form of dried grass, oak bark, rocks, etc (see figure 8). Or it took the form of soil dug from

30. Peter Zumthor, Mari Lending. 2018. A Feeling of History. Zurich: Scheidegger & Spiess. 24.

31. Idib. 25.

32. Merriam-Webster.com Dictionary, s.v. “objet trouvé,” accessed April 28, 202.

33. Peter Zumthor, Mari Lending. 2018. A Feeling of History. Zurich: Scheidegger & Spiess. 25.

WILSON | COMMEMORATIONS

A COLLECTION OF OBJECTS 90

Figure 8, Detail of a chart collating the collected objet trouves from Rosewood and Newberry.

EXCAVATING | collecting objet trouves

91

92

93

“History gives life to recollection.”

Cicero, De Oratore 34

34. Marcus Tullius Cicero and Maria Antonietta Orlandi, De Oratore (Subiaco: Abbazia di Santa Scolastica, 1465).

WILSON | COMMEMORATIONS

94

1 SATURATING

2 EXCAVATING

COMMEMORATION 3 EMBODYING

35. Merriam-Webster.com Thesaurus, s.v. “embody,” accessed April 28, 2021.

4 MEMORIALIZING

PART | title

95

EMBODYING

(transitive verb) express, arrange or exemplify intelligently or perceptibly 35

WILSON | COMMEMORATIONS

96

Figure 9, captured frames at the Newberry site show the scale of the space.

People complete the picture.

EMBODYING | i am but a pilgrim

I AM BUT A PILGRIM

January 17th, 2021

97

I woke up at 6:45 AM. I made coffee, ate an English muffin and got in my pre-packed car. I headed East out of Gainesville. The morning sun began to peek out over the horizon behind me. It illuminated the fields and the forests. A haunting fog held the air.

These recording activities are listening actions.

In one sense they are tools to document my specific time, but in a more important sense, these methods serve to transport other viewers into these spaces without physically visiting the site.

I was heading to Newberry.

In that way: we call all be pilgirms.

—

We can all feel the presense of history.

Over the first four months of 2021, I visited Newberry and Rosewood six times. Each time I left early in the morning at the break of dawn. Each time I stayed in these places (see figure 9).

The following pages offer an opportunity to journey to the sites of trauma at Newberry and Rosewood as pilgrims.

I lingered.

I explored.

I recorded.

I took photographs, I recorded the soundscapes, I sketched, I painted, and I wrote.

WILSON | COMMEMORATIONS

98

PART | title

99

WILSON | COMMEMORATIONS

100

PART | title

101

WILSON | COMMEMORATIONS

102

PART | title

103

WILSON | COMMEMORATIONS

104

PART | title

WILSON | COMMEMORATIONS

106

PART | title

107

WILSON | COMMEMORATIONS

108

PART | title

109

WILSON | COMMEMORATIONS

110

PART | title

111

WILSON | COMMEMORATIONS

112

PART | title

113

WILSON | COMMEMORATIONS

114

PART | title

115

WILSON | COMMEMORATIONS

116

PART | title

117

WILSON | COMMEMORATIONS

118

EMBODYING | i am but a pilgrim

119

120

121

“I confess I do not believe in time.

I like to fold my magic carpet, after use, in such a way as to superimpose one part of the pattern upon another.

Let visitors trip. And the highest enjoyment of timelessness - in a landscape selected at random - is when I stand among rare butterflies and their foodplants.

This is ecstasy, and behind the ecstasy is something else, which is hard to explain.

It is like a momentary vacuum into which rushes all that I love. A sense of oneness with sun and stone.”

Vladimir Nabokov, Speak, Memory 36

36. Vladimir Nabokov, Speak, Memory. An Autobiography Revisited (1966), New York: Random House, 1989, 139.

WILSON | COMMEMORATIONS

122

EMBODYING | conjouring the past

TO PRESERVE THEIR FREEDOM

123

January 26th, 2021 | 11:01 AM Yesterday in studio I painted a watercolor drawing that depicted the atmosphere of a tragic event that happened during the Rosewood story. I drew it in the hope of conjuring up the past. A way of depicting the event in which I intend to translate to architecture. A middle, visual and atmospheric ground between words and architectural language. I am happy with this method of working. It beings my soul closer to the event: I begin to be washed with fear, anger; I gain empathy through doing. Sleeping on the process and drawing last night, I woke up today with a bit of sadness. I conjured an evil event: black bodies being thrown in the ground, a tragic return to nature. I feel guilty. As if I am celebrating this event. I know, at my heart, that I am not. But I do not want to communicate the wrong message, I must be aware of where my focus lies.

I saw a painting as I scrolled through Instagram in the morning, To Preserve Their Freedom, 1988 by Jacob Lawrence. It depicts Haitian men, women and children rising to fight a Napoleonic colonist invasion in the 1800s. It is triumphant. Not in the way of depicting a hero, but depicting the will to fight for freedom. As if the gods of the internet blessed me with this finding, this painting is a reminder to myself to celebrate, in addition to mourn. Instead of relying solely on the tragedy of these two stories, I too must celebrate and acknowledge the lives of the brave men and women

who fought to preserve their freedom at Rosewood and Newberry. I can, and should do both. It takes me back to the poetic lens in which I worked through last semester. In some moments I am writing an eulogy, in some I am writing an ode, perhaps to bring these together in a measured and rhythmic way, to compose the two modes of viewing history together is to write the Ballad of Rosewood and the Ballad of the Newberry Six.

WILSON | COMMEMORATIONS

124

conjoured images of the rosewood massacre

EMBODYING | conjouring the past

125

WILSON | COMMEMORATIONS

126

Figure 10, sketch diagram of a translation exercise.

EMBODYING | translating the past

TRANSLATING THE PAST

To reach for the past, a translation must occur.

The past cannot be simply conjoured and brought forth into reality. Translation requires a leap-offaith. Translation requires something to be lost.

The following passage from Alberto Perez-Gomez's Timely Meditations served as an inspiration for this phase of this research. Because of its significance and the clarity of its prose, it is quoted in long form: "Such a discovery can be associated at different levels with the identification of a poetic event (always a personal encounter capable of "changing one's life") and its architectural interpretation, i.e., an act of "translation" of all kinds of poetic artefacts and historical documents, ranging from paintings or texts, to drawings, models or buildings. Translation, of course in not merely transcription. The understanding of our making, here and now, as a historical phenomenon, is our only possibility for a genuine symbolic intentionality, leading in fact to the rejection of historicism and nostalgic revivals as false forms of cultural continuity...Embodied making, involving a situated mind in a body, its flesh, pleasure and pain, searching for an order rooted in history, perception, and materiality, is the opposite of the construction of an object or building through the implementation of conceptual, methodological tools, and formalist or technological processes.

The product might represent a technique in the first instance, implemented in the project as a deliberate act of discovery, but personal

37. Alberto Perez-Gomez. 2016. Timely Meditations: Selected Essays on Architecture. Vol. 2. 2 vols. Montreal: Rightangle International. 50.

techniques guided by historical and cultural insight have a much better chance to resonate with socially relevant meanings." 37 Gomez words serve as an open call for an embodied maker to inhabit spaces of cultural and historical importance and translate their meanings through material.

Inspired by this call to action, an exercise of translation from written word to spatial fragment was formed. (see figure 10). These mediums of communication, which related syntatically, require many passes of translation in between them (see pages 128-131). In this manner, a translated history is never direct. It is given the space and time to wander, to transform, and to blossom.

This is a sequence of translation:

From historical artifacts (language), to the embodied maker (translator), to material language (meaningful symbols), that speaks through phenomelogical mediums (senses), that creates a poetic event (commemoration).

127

WILSON | COMMEMORATIONS

NEWBERRY AXONOMETRIC TRANSLATION 128

1 AXONOMETRIC COLLAGE

2 MASKING EXERCISE

Collage reconstruction is transformed into an axonometric. Layers are pulled to reveal spatial potentials.

Masking method allows for a reinterpretation of the saturated collage. Moments of spatial and narritive significance are revealed.

EMBODYING | translating the past

129

3 SEPERATION INTO FRAGMENTS

4 RESTITCHING FRAGMENTS TOGETHER

The working document is split into three fragments, eash representative of a historical mofif: the enternce, the tree, the bodies.

The fragments are stiched bakc together, offering a sequence of moments to inhabit the site. Translation is tranformation.

WILSON | COMMEMORATIONS

ROSEWOOD SECTIONAL TRANSLATION 130

1 CONJURED IMAGE

2 FINDING MEASURE

Embodying the past, stories are translated into prose. From that prose, images are depicting the emotion of the words are made.

Scale, dimention, rhythm, and levels of intimacy are drawn from the joint composition of image and word.

EMBODYING | translating the past

131

3 DRAWING TECTONICS

4 SPECULATING SECTIONS

From this measure, a speculation of an architectural enclosue is derived. This is done at scale. The body is imagined to inhabit this space that serves as a joint between body and ground.

These speculations are translated into architectural proposals. Material, light, shadow construct a composition of space.

WILSON | COMMEMORATIONS

132

entrance

the bodies

EMBODYING | translating the past

133

the tree

WILSON | COMMEMORATIONS

134

individual enclosure above the ground

EMBODYING | translating the past

135

communal enclosure in the ground

WILSON | COMMEMORATIONS

136

EMBODYING | translating the past

137

commemorative enclosure on the ground

138

139

The truth does not change, and that is why the answers worked out long ago can help you find solutions to the challenges of our time.”

John Lewis, Together, You Can Redeem the Soul of Our Nation 38

38. John Lewis, John Lewis: Together, You Can Redeem the Soul of Our Nation, The New York Times (The New York Times, July 30, 2020).

WILSON | COMMEMORATIONS

140

Why does the truth matter?

Can the truth heal?

Does an understanding of the past, present a better future?

the atonement of truth

THE ATONEMENT OF TRUTH Life of truth is eternal, Immortal is its past, Power of truth will endure, Truth shall hold to the last.

Muhammad Ali, Truth 39 Timeless Truths The truth is timeless, everlasting. Even as the truth fades, as time and wickedness obscures it; the truth's silence is felt. The truth adapts and changes to fit the present and helps humanity understand its place in the present. It shapes the being of the individual as they make their place in the cosmos. There is power in the truth as Muhammad Ali wrote in his poetic meditation on the word. The truth of the world is held in stories, passed down through generations, distributed through print, broadcast through the airwaves, written on the walls of the city, and impressed into the landscape.

How can architecture construct a bridge to this truth?

As architecture, seeks to remain timeless in a rapidly transforming world, can the truth offer it immortality?

Presenting the Past’s Truth If it can be accepted that truth is a road in a search for meaning, what role does architecture play in communicating this meaning? “Architecture allows meaning to present itself...”, wrote Alberto PerezGomez in Questions of Perception.40 By presenting meaning, architecture can become an embodiment the communicated meaning. The work of this research pivots its gaze to the past in search of meaning. David Michael Levin identified this truth 39. Muhammad Ali, The Truth, ITV Studios,1974.

40. Alberto Perez-Gomez, Questions of Perception: Phenomenology of Architecture. (Tokyo: A+U Publishing Co., Ltd, 2006). 18.

41. David Michael Levin, The Opening of Vision: Nihilism and the Postmodern Situation, Routledge (New York, NY;London), 1988, 440.

42. Juhani Pallasmaa, The Thinking Hand: Existential and Embodied Wisdom in Architecture,(New York: Wiley, 2009). 41.

43. Idib, 41.

seeking vision as the "aletheic gaze".41 This phrase comes from the hermeneutic theory of truth and is an intention "to see from a multiplicity of standpoints and perspectives" and is characterized as "multiple, pluralistic, democratic, inclusionary, horizontal and caring." 42 This new way of looking at the world, or "new vision" as labeled by Pallasmaa, provides individuals with new mode of being.42 A being that is more empathetic and participatory as they are more connected and understanding on their truth's context, whether immediate or of the past.

Architecture can serve as the medium to activate the aletheic vision. Well-placed and well-informed constructions can make the truth more clear for the collective to see and feel; History becomes material. Morales describes this architecture as a "vestige"through time, a "monument to recollection".44 In accordance, Edward Casey calls for architecture to act as a "hearth" and " a nurturing locus of public memory".45 This truth-seeking diction transforms the notion of a monument away from its overly symbolic norm, into spaces of healing, spaces that hold the truth and communicate it for the benefit of all.

The Moral of the Story When describing America's current relationship with her history, writer Isabel Wilkerson called it a "spiritual crisis".46 The American spirit and therefore her collective identity and social traditions are disconnected with her lineage and the present is suffering because of it.

The moral compass of the United States is spinning, and perhaps it always was. Perhaps, through the contextual place-bound storytelling proposed in this 44. Ignasi de Solà-Morales, Differences: Weak Architecture (Cambridge: The MIT Press, 1996.) 71.

45. Edward S Casey, Public Memory in the Making: Ethics and Place in the Wake of 9/11, in Architecture, Ethics, and the Personhood of Place (Hanover: University Press of New England, 2007), p. 76.

46. Isabel Wilkerson, This History is Long; This History Is Deep (New York: WNYC Studios, 2020), Web, 52 minutes.

141

WILSON | COMMEMORATIONS

142

the atonement of truth

research, this moral crisis can be addressed through material means. In his ethnographic investigation into the Western Apache relationship with landscape and language anthropologist, Kieth Basso found that Native American places and the stories they hold work as one to hold the morality of the community. Using the research of Mikhail Bakhtin, he identifies these entities as "chronotopes".47 Bakhtin defines these places as, ”points in the geography of a community where time and space intersect and fuse. Time takes on flesh and becomes visible for human contemplation; likewise, space becomes charges and responsive to the movements of time and history and the enduring character of a people...Chronotopes thus stand as monuments to the community itself, as symbols of it, as forces operating to shapes its members’ images of themselves.” 48 Kindred to how the moral of a folk story communicate moral lessons to children, chronotopes serve as spaces of moral communication anchored in situ.

Where historical understanding in the United States far too often exists in abstract space, a counter argument led by architects and artists to engage with our places of history can lean the public mind to a more accepting and forgiving mentality. A Western Apache man named Nick Thompson, when interviewed by Basso, perhaps said it best: “Stories go to work on you like arrows.

Stories make you live right.

Stories make you replace yourself.” 49 47. M. M. Bakhtin, The Dialogic Imagination: Four Essays, (Austin: University of Texas Press, 2017). 7.

48. Idib, 7.

49. Keith H. Basso, Wisdom Sits in Places, (Albuquerque: University of New Mexioco Press, 1996). 64.

A New American Revolution Telling the truth of America's history, accepting her failures, questioning her motives, and her actions is a truer form of patriotism. Rather than relying on the crutch of shallow symbols and performative actions and phrases, the honest patriot acknowledges the past, allows the lessons of history to show them the truth of the present and actively works to correct the future, repairing the broken soul of the nation. The architecture of reckoning, worked towards in this research, intends to be an ally of the honest patriot. The movement's constructs work as vestiges and activators of a great national catharsis. The new American revolution is a truth seeking movement, shaped by "we the people" intending to overcome the past in order to heal the American spirit and lay the foundation for a better future for the people of this country and the rest of the world.

143

WILSON | COMMEMORATIONS

144

the atonement of truth

ENCLOSURES OF MEMORY I was speaking with my studio-mates the other day.

We were discussing the notion of specificity in design.

When stepping into sociology, history, culture how specific can architecture be? When does it become too “press fit” into a narrative? When does it become too distant or aloof to it’s external references?

Here is an exercise: switch out the culture that a design intends to encompass. Organize a trade, take out the symbols, the artifacts, switch the names.

Does the design still work?

I don’t think any building would pass this test. If you told me the African American museum was the Latino American museum (bar names and symbols) I would believe you. What does this tell you about architecture?

We’re making charged containers for life, culture, events.

We don’t make culture, we respond to it, challenge it and then step back. Buildings are good listeners.

We then turned our conversation to another case study. One we’re all fond of in various ways. If you exercised the above test on the Jewish Museum in Berlin by Libeskind, would it still work? If you told me it was a museum about the genocide of Bosnian Serbs or American slaves, would it still work? Yes. That is because Libeskind and his practice designed a museum for pain. The experience evokes distortion, suffering in the shifting perspectives and sudden thresholds. Its cold concrete walls trap darkness and echo somber tones. The shuffling feet of the visitors of the present reflect into the imagined shuffling feet of shackled Jews. The spotlight from above, carving a path from you to god becomes the watching eye of a guard or

the closing door of a gas chamber. It is a series of experiential events that construct place-worlds within the souls and minds of visitors. It is inescapable, it is unnerving, it is a monument to suffering and pain activated but light, sound, temperature and scale.

These is the domain of architecture, what specific narrative it reaches for in not the primary concern.

I am interested in evoking feelings first and foremost.

The narrative that I do it for? That is just a a tool for me to reach towards my goal. It allows me to site my experiments in a place and in a socio-cultural narrative.

145

146

147

"The world is not with you when you tell the truth. But God is with you when you tell the truth."

Leroy Carrier, suvivor of the Rosewood Massacre, Rosewood: The Full Story 50

50. Gary Moore, 2015. Rosewood: The Full Story. Columbia, South Carolina: Manantial Press.

148

149

“In rewriting the nation’s historical narratives, how do we speak into these silences? Or maybe build into these silences?

And how do we give them voice, how do we make visible what’s been made invisible?”

Mabel O. Wilson, Contested Ground: Design and the Politics of Memory 51

51. Mabel O. Wilson, Contested Ground: Design and the Politics of Memory, (New York: Architectural League of New York, 2019), web, 83 minutes.

150

1 SATURATING

2 EXCAVATING

COMMEMORATION 3 EMBODYING

52. Merriam-Webster.com Dictionary, s.v. “memorialize,” accessed April 29, 2021

4 MEMORIALIZING

(transitive verb) to call to remembrance 52

151

MEMORIALIZING

WILSON | COMMEMORATIONS

152

MEMORIALIZING | the tectonics of commemoration

THE TECTONICS OF COMMEMORATION

The speculative drawings yielded from a translated past offered promises of a commemorative architecture. Yet, the histories of these places demanded more and different perspectives of study; one more translation needed to take place.

Model making offers an opportunity to confront the possibilities that drawing neglects. Models allow for a slowness and a material feedback that gives care to tectonic construction. Perhaps through a framework of structure and panels can negotiate the scale of the body, the scale of the landscape, and the conceptual scale of the narrative. Perhaps, tectonics can tell a story, becoming a joint between the soul and history As Mario Fascari wrote in his essay, The Tell-the-tale Detail, "The joint, that is the fertile detail, is the place where both the construction and the construing of architecture take place." 53 The tectonic joint offers a process of signification, a way to produce and give meaning to a work of architecture.

The next set of pages display the results of an investigation, activated through model, into this notion forwarded by Fascari (see pages 154-163).

These images are pleasing and show the potential of the tectonic joint. However, upon reflection, the stories of Rosewood and Newberry, again, asked for more.

Something fell short. These architectural expressions, while elegant, fail to communicate. While the material of wood alone speak of temporalities, the way in which they were joined, expresses permanence. This

53. Mario Frascari. 1981. The Tell-The-Tale Detail. VIA 7; The Building of Architecture (1981): 511.

54. Lebbeus Woods, Slow Manifesto (New York City, New York: Princeton Architectural Press, 2015).

architecture is static; it claims to be the right answer.

A call for resistance by the late theorist, Lebbeus Woods, resonate with these doubts: "Resist believing that the result is the most important thing."

"Resist the idea that architecture can save the world."

"Resist the claim that history is concerned with the past."

"Resist the tendency to repeat yourself" 54 Upon completing this experiment, with the words of Woods in my mind, I went looking for another process to commemorate

153

WILSON | COMMEMORATIONS

154

enclosure holds and emanates light

MEMORIALIZING | a rosewood reconstruction

155

relationship between structural grid and paneling system

WILSON | COMMEMORATIONS

156

side elevation

MEMORIALIZING | a rosewood reconstruction

157

front elevation

WILSON | COMMEMORATIONS

158

inhabitation by day

MEMORIALIZING | a rosewood reconstruction

159

inhabitation by night

WILSON | COMMEMORATIONS

160

facilitates relationship between artifact, light, person and place

MEMORIALIZING | a rosewood reconstruction

161

enclosures openings scaled to the body

Just like moons and like suns, With the certainty of tides, Just like hopes springing high, Still I’ll rise.

Maya Angelou, And Still I Rise 55

55. Maya Angelou, And Still I Rise, Poetry Foundation. Accessed April 26, 2021.

164

165

"Precious moments of intuition result from patient work."

Peter Zumthor, Thinking Architecture 56

56. Peter Zumthor. 1998. ”Thinking Architecture”. Basel: Birkhauser.

WILSON | COMMEMORATIONS

166

Figure 14, an unexpected process.

MEMORIALIZING | the virtue of the unexpected

THE VIRTUE OF THE UNEXPECTED

February 28th, 2021 | 3:45 PM | Rosewood, FL "What are people leaving behind? I am going to make note of some ways that people are commemorating at this place (the Rosewood historical marker) today...there is something to this...a ritual of cleansing and commemorating."

— The second half of this research became an investigation into finding an process of commemoration alternate of the tectonic expression. The answer to this problem was dicovered, like many facets of the research, at the actual sites of racial trauma.

At the Rosewood historical marker, Visitors or pilgirms would wrap the poles with beads, ribbons and other personal mementoes. Others would write on rocks, branches and leave them at the site (see figure 11) In other locations, like Shiloh Cemetary, people press and bury mementoes into the ground, specifically, shells are pressed in the ground to mark where the dead rest (see figure 12).

In these commemorations, people remember through action, people remember through ritual. To see the evidence of these commemorations when visiting a site, it is to spend time with the previous visitors, it is to share in the quiet comfort of knowing that one is not alone; these actions tell the story of time.

How could an architectural process of commemoration speak to this level of interactive memory making?

A series of material experiments was devised. Each experiment seeks to negotiate a embedded objet trouve and a reciving material, predomintely plaster.

These composites are activated and transformed by a collage of material processes, like embedding, carving, digging, etc (see pages 170-181).

The results of these experiments never had the burden of expectations. In contrast to a formal tectonic process, an unexpected process yields artifacts without the weight of authorship (see figure 14).

The material, and therefore the history of a place, is allowed the speak louder than the author.

167

WILSON | COMMEMORATIONS

COMMEMORATING AT THE ROSEWOOD HISTORICAL MARKER

168

Figure 11, wrapping

writing

MEMORIALIZING | the virtue of the unexpected

169

Figure 12, pressing

A CATALOG OF COMMEMORATIONS

170 embed and carve

a tale of three

fleeting material

wrapped while wet

trials by fire

involve by dissolve

EMBED

CARVE

WRAP

SCRAPE

PRESS

fix (an object) firmly and deeply in a surrounding mass.

to cut with care or precision

to involve completely

to remove from a surface by usually repeated strokes of an edged instrument

to act upon through steady pushing or thrusting force exerted in contact

DIG

BREAK

LEAVE

BURN

CHIP

DISSOLVE

to break up, turn, or loosen (earth) with an implement

to separate into parts with suddenness or violence

to cause to remain as a trace or aftereffect

to undergo alteration or destruction by the action of fire or heat

to cut or break (a small piece) from something

to cause to disperse or disappear

171

172

WHAT AM I LOOKING FOR?

173

Febuary 25th 26th, 2021 | 3L06 PM

What am I looking for?

Something that can be impressed onto/into.

Something that can be projected onto.

Something that can be be projected into.

Something that can be added to, rather than subtracted from.

Something to changes in the night; translucency.

Something made from, or changed from fire, heat.

Something the bends, cracks and dissolves.

Something found.

Something lost.

Something constructed.

WILSON | COMMEMORATIONS

174

PART | title

175

WILSON | COMMEMORATIONS

176

"embed and carve" natural artifacts were embedding in a plaster mass. using a hand saw, material was subtracted from the mass to reveal the historical material buried beneath.

MEMORIALIZING | a catalog of commemorations

177

"the tale of three" natural artifacts were embedding in three different materials: plaster, concrete and resin. using hand tools, the surfaces of the masses were dug into.

WILSON | COMMEMORATIONS

178

"fleeting material" as shallow plates of plaster began to dry, natural artifacts were used to impress and etch themselves into the surface of the plaster.

MEMORIALIZING | a catalog of commemorations

179

"wrapped while wet" as a mass of plaster dried, a system of grids, points and lines were wrapped around the semi-solid material leaving a matix of surface impressions.

WILSON | COMMEMORATIONS

180

"trials by fire" natural materials were embedded into a plaster mass. this material composition was set ablaze. using tools, the burned mass was carved into and divided into new, unique masses.

MEMORIALIZING | a catalog of commemorations

181

"composite wall" with the different resistances of materials in mind, a composite of metal, concrete and plaster was erected. over time, this was was chipped away, cut, broken and dissolved to reveal its hidden layers.

WILSON | COMMEMORATIONS

182

artifice elevation collage 01

MEMORIALIZING | artifice and edifice

183

artifice elevation collage 02

WILSON | COMMEMORATIONS

184

artifice elevation collage 01, detail

PART| |artifice title and edifice MEMORIALIZING

185

artifice elevation collage 02, detail

WILSON | COMMEMORATIONS

186

MEMORIALIZING | a monument to time

A MONUMENT TO TIME

The material experiments yielded a multitude of unexpected discoveries about the nature of material and the possibilities as they become transformed by commemorative actions.

These lessons became culminated into a final proposal for a monument at Newberry.

This monument was to be a composite of material processes. It was to be temporal by taking advantage of the process of ruination that results from commemorative actions.

A layered wall was to be built up overtime. It was to convey it process of construction and deconstruction in material form; a sequenced monument (see page 192). First, five brass poles, each representative of a victim who was hung at the site, would be fixed into the ground. Next, these poles would be cast in concrete.

Finally, the entire composite would be cast in rammed earth. Over time this wall would degrade, transform and slowly remove itself from the site. If this wall is an edification of the history, of the pain, of the memory of racial trauma, it would slowly fade back into the earth.

This temporal monument can act as a hearth for communal commemoration. It could be an embodiment of the history of a place, offering a place return to, to rest, to recharge, to remember and mostly most importantly, to reckon with where we have come from and what work still needs to be done.

187

WILSON | COMMEMORATIONS

188

PART | title

189

WILSON | COMMEMORATIONS

190

PART | title

191

WILSON | COMMEMORATIONS

A SEQUENCED MONUMENT

192

1 ground prepared

2 brass poles are placed

5 wall is broken

6 wall is broken again

9 wall is removed

10 the brass poles remain

MEMORIALIZING | a monument to time

193

3 wall is formed

4 wall is impressed with the marks of visitors and nature

7 core is revealed

8 wall is dug into

WILSON | COMMEMORATIONS

194

MEMORIALIZING PART| a| title monument to time

SOURCES 195

WILSON | COMMEMORATIONS

196

MEMORIALIZING | a monument to time

197

198

"A Rock, A River, A Tree Hosts to species long since departed, Marked the mastodon...

199

200

...But today, the Rock cries out to us, clearly, forcefully, Come, you may stand upon my Back and face your distant destiny, But seek no haven in my shadow.

I will give you no hiding place down here...

201

202

...Here, root yourselves beside me.

I am that Tree planted by the River, Which will not be moved.

I, the Rock, I the River, I the Tree...

203

WILSON | COMMEMORATIONS

204

COMMEMORATING | a monument to time

205

...Lift up your eyes upon This day breaking for you.

Give birth again To the dream."

Maya Angelou, On The Pulse Of Morning57

57. Maya Angelou. On the Pulse of Morning, Poetry Foundation. Accessed April 26, 2021.

206

207

"In this truth, in this faith we trust.

For while we have our eyes on the future, History has its eyes on us."

Amanda Gorman, The Hill We Climb 58

58. Amanda Gorman and Oprah Winfrey, The Hill We Climb: an Inaugural Poem (London: Chatto & Windus, 2021).

208

A COMMEMORATION IS

a commemoration is humble a commemoration is from a place of respect a commemoration is resistant of judgment a commemoration is slow a commemoration is not careful, but it is not careless a commemoration is proud a commemoration is personal a commemoration is universal a commemoration is a soft voice a commemoration is a roaring condemnation a commemoration is kind a commemoration is hurtful a commemoration is provocative a commemoration is demanding a commemoration is a process a commemoration is never a single moment a commemoration is a ritual a commemoration is a conversation a commemoration is listening a commemoration is projecting

209

210

a commemoration is an embrace a commemoration is a gathering a commemoration is an individual a commemoration is shared a commemoration is kept to oneself a commemoration is at day a commemoration is at night a commemoration is a celebration a commemoration is in mourning a commemoration is a call to justice a commemoration is transformative a commemoration is made of material a commemoration is made around material a commemoration is complex a commemoration is simple a commemoration is made of actions a commemoration is made of places a commemoration is for the past a commemoration is for the present

a commemoration is hope for a better future

211

212

213

“I have had faith in America for as long as I can remember...It is not time for America to justify this belief I have in her, to show me I have not believed in vain.”

Gorgon Parks 59

59. Gordon Parks, What Their Cry Means to Me – A Negro’s Own Evaluation, Life Magazine, May 31, 1963

WILSON | COMMEMORATIONS

BIBLIOGRAPHY 214

Ali, Muhammad. The Truth. ITV Studios,1974.

Angelou, Maya. And Still I Rise. Poetry Foundation. Accessed April 26, 2021. https://www. poetryfoundation.org/poems/46446/still-i-rise.

—. On the Pulse of Morning, Poetry Foundation.

Accessed April 26, 2021. https://www.poetryfoundation. org/poems/48990/on-the-pulse-of-morning.

Bachelard, Gaston. 1964. The Poetics of Space. New York: The Penguin Group.

Bakhtin, Michael. The Dialogic Imagination: Four Essays, (Austin: University of Texas Press, 2017).

Baldwin, James. 1961. Nobody Knows My Name: More Notes of a Native Son. New York City: Dial Press.

Basso, Keith Hamilton. Wisdom Sits in Places: Landscape and Language among the Western Apache.

Albuquerque: Univ. of New Mexico Press, 2010.

Bois, W. E. B. Du. 1903. The Souls of Black Folks. Chicago: A. C. McClurg.

Casey, Edwards S. Public Memory in the Making: Ethics and Place in the Wake of 9/11, in Architecture, Ethics, and the Personhood of Place (Hanover: University Press of New England, 2007).

Collins, Billy. 2020. Poetry 101: What Is Poetic Form? Masterclass, (November 8). https://www. masterclass.com/articles/poetry-101-what-is-poeticform-learn-about-15-different-types-of-poems.

Equal Justice Initiative. 2018. Lynching in America.

Socialology Research, Equal Justice Initiative, Montgomery. https://lynchinginamerica.eji.org/report/.

Frascari, Mario. 1981. The Tell-The-Tale Detail.

VIA 7; The Building of Architecture (1981): 2137. Courtesy of the author and publisher.

Gorman, Amanda, and Oprah Winfrey. The Hill We Climb: an Inaugural Poem. London: Chatto & amp; Windus, 2021.

Holiday, Billie. 1937. Strange Fruit. Comp. Abel Meeropol.

Holl, Steven, J. P.-G. (2006). Questions of Perception: Phenomenology of Architecture.

Tokyo: A+U Publishing Co., Ltd. Levin, David Michael. The Opening of Vision: Nihilism and the Postmodern Situation.

Routledge (New York, NY;London), 1988.

Lewis, John. John Lewis: Together, You Can Redeem the Soul of Our Nation. The New York Times (The New York Times, July 30, 2020), https://www.nytimes.com/2020/07/30/opinion/ john-lewis-civil-rights-america.html.

Lippit, Yukio. Understanding Culture through Material Artifacts. Office of the Vice Provost for Advances in Learning. Harvard. Accessed April 27, 2021.

Mann, Sally. 2005. Deep South. New York City: Bulfinch Press.

—. 2018. a thousand crossings. Edited by Julie Warnement. New York City: Abrams.

bibliography

Marcus Tullius Cicero and Maria Antonietta Orlandi. De Oratore. (Subiaco: Abbazia di Santa Scolastica, 1465).

Moore, Gary. 2015. Rosewood: The Full Story.

Columbia, South Carolina : Manantial Press.

Nabokov, Vladimir. Speak, Memory. An Autobiography Revisited (1966), New York: Random House, 1989.

Pallasmaa, Juhani. 2009. The Thinking Hand: Existential and Embodied Wisdom in Architecture. New York: Wiley.

— (2012). The Eyes of the Skin. (M. Swift, Ed.) Chichester: Wiley.

Parks, Gordon. What Their Cry Means to Me – A Negro’s Own Evaluation. Life Magazine, May 31, 1963, 22-78.

Perez-Gomez, Alberto. 2016. Timely Meditations: Selected Essays on Architecture. Vol. 2. 2 vols. Montreal: Rightangle International.

Phelan, Matthew. 'History Is Written by the Victors’ Was Not Written by the Victors. Slate Magazine. Slate, November 27, 2019.

Solà-Morales, Ignasi. Differences.

(Cambridge: The MIT Press, 1996.)

Swirko, Cindy. 2020. Newberry digs for lynching truth.

The Gainesville Sun. Web. Gainesville, Florida, February 29. Accessed April 20, 2021. https://www.gainesville. com/news/20200229/newberry-digs-for-lynching-truth.

Wilkerson, Isabel. This History is Long; This History Is Deep (New York: WNYC Studios, 2020), Web.

Wilson, Mabel O. Contested Ground: Design and the Politics of Memory, (New York: Architectural League of New York, 2019), web, 83 minutes.

Woods, Lebbeus. Slow Manifesto. New York City, New York: Princeton Architectural Press, 2015.

Zinn, Howard. A People's History of the United States. New York, NY: Harper, 2017.

Zumthor, Peter. Lending, Mari. 2018. A Feeling of History. Zurich: Scheidegger & Spiess.

—. 2006. Atmospheres. Basel: Birkhauser.

—. 1998. Thinking Architecture. Basel: Birkhauser.

215

WILSON | COMMEMORATIONS

216

PART | title

217

Mark Ignacio Wilson was a graduate student at the University of Florida: School of Architecture. He graduated with his Masters of Architecture degree in Spring 2021. In 2019, he graduated with his Undergraduate degree also at the UF: SoA. Also in 2019, he had the honor of traveling across Europe as part of the University of Florida's Vicenza Institute of Architecture. Mark seeks to create sensual creations that stir human emotion, to educate and learn from others, to explore new ideas and places, and to connect with other creative minds.

then, just like that, i was there. then, i left and kept there with me. then, i left and there kept me with it.

then, you did the same.

now, we are there. now, there is we.

and now, we will never forget.