Sites in and around Canberra
The SIEV X Memorial
introduction / overview / images / location / Projects
Landscape Architect: Dr Sue Anne Ware
Location: Weston Park, Canberra
Project Collaborators: Steve Biddulph, Rod Horsfeld, Beth Gibbings, and interested groups and individuals throughout Australia.
Budget: Volunteer and in-kind donations (incalculable) –This project was entirely funded by volunteer labours and donations from numerous individuals.
OVERVIEW
This project began in 2002 in response to the tragedy of the drowning of 353 refugees in 2001. It was initiated by Steve Biddulph, a phycologist and parenting author, Rod Horsfeld, a Uniting Church Minister, and Beth Gibbings, an artist and project manager. In 2002 Sue Anne was asked to be their landscape architect and invited to assist in development of an education proposal for school children and eventually a memorial to be located in Canberra.
Over the next five years and in consultation with a diverse and continually growing constituency of interested parties, from school children, to church and community groups, NGOs, academics, politicians, family and friends of victims, and countless concerned individuals, the project evolved in several phases. These included the development and distribution of educational packages, a competition for the design of a memorial, a special high-profile Artist’s pole Auction, as well as the installation and ceremonies associated with the Memorial itself.
The Memorial project has involved people from all walks of life across the nation. In 2002, primary and secondary schools across the country were invited to participate in developing an idea for the design of a memorial place as a collective work of art. Over 200 entries were received and this collection toured capital cities throughout 2003 and 2004. The momentum to build a physical memorial increased and Sue Anne’s involvement intensified. Ultimately a design proposal by a Year 11 Brisbane student, Mitchell Donaldson, was selected. This design included the creation of 353 poles – one for each of those that died at sea, adults and children, some with the sinking of the vessel and some after many hours in the water. Larger poles commemorate adults, while smaller ones remember younger victims. Numerous school children, church organisations, refugee rights groups, and various individuals participated by painting and decorating the poles.
The poles traveled across the continent to Canberra in 2006, to be erected on the fifth anniversary of the event. Refused permission for permanent installation, they were raised instead in a one-day ceremony on October 15th in Weston Park. The ceremony attracted people from around Australia. Almost 300 poles arrived and were raised by 600 volunteers. Over 1400 others arrived for the ceremony. Before and after the ceremony, the poles lay in situ while people wandered quietly amongst them, touching their surfaces. The poles were slowly raised for a period of silence. For five minutes the poles stood along 300 meters of lakeshore in a beautiful array. They were then gently laid again on the grass. This year, in a ceremony on September 2nd, the memorial poles were raised again in Canberra’s Weston Park in an event was reported in the national news media.
The project initiated and encouraged collaboration on an unprecedented scale across a diverse spectrum of contemporary Australian society. It has had national media coverage at several key points in its process, most recently for the September 2nd installation. Innovative in respect of this size and level of public activism, it also developed various innovative methods for the collaboration and involvement of different groups. The significance of this project in raising the profile of landscape architecture as a discipline capable of effective political and social activism through design is its key contribution. It has sent a clear message to all those involved (many of whom did not known about landscape architecture), and now to all those who know of this widely publicised project, that design is a vital tool to help effect social change and heal personal grief.
Certainly this project is a conscious demonstration of a new direction for the profession in terms of direct engagement with multiple clients across the broadest possible spectrum of ‘Australian’ society. Design activism has emerging relevance for everyday concerns of citizens – as shown by the degree of enthusiastic participation in the project (see attachments). This project has shown how carefully conceived, collaborative, physical interventions in the landscape can register and share the ephemeral and intangible qualities of deep social concerns.
The legibility of the memorial itself is assisted by a clear, simple concept. The individual poles represent the drowned victims, their arrangement by the water has responded to the site, winding in shapes that reflect the edge, the figures of emergent reed beds in the water, and framing the exact outline of the sunken boat itself so that visitors can walk inside and experience its shocking confinement (refer aerial and other site photography).
The design comprises plantation-grown timber poles. Materials for the decoration of the poles were at the discretion of those involved. Erection of the sculpture involved minimal disturbance to the site. The design, however, is less concerned with any further elaboration of environmental sensitivity for its own sake on a site which is already highly disturbed and ‘unnatural’, than with the importance, in this symbolic capital setting, of social sustainability. Social sustainability concerns creating a world where people of all persuasions, political beliefs, religions etc, are encouraged to thrive and flourish in our societies. Where care for our environments is concerned, the project believes that the concern encouraged by the construction of the memorial for human victims, will result in a general enriching of our capacity for care in all areas of our lives.
While the project can be seen to draw on the wider history of environmental and design activism and land art, the sheer scope of its engagement with people across the country is unprecedented. The landscape architect played a pivotal role in this enormous logistical undertaking, influencing its success through applied knowledge of legislative requirements and constraints of site manipulation, experience in negotiation with responsible authorities at all levels, and practical appreciation of the aesthetic effect of the poles in the landscape.
Throughout the project Sue Anne has worked with different groups, prepared material to direct and encourage participatory responses, initiated and run supporting projects in Melbourne (eg the Artist’s Charity Auction), advised on siting, environmental and logistical issues regarding the pole production and installation and liaised with authorities. This involvement by a landscape architect at all levels of a process from conceptual development to final installation, over the course of five years and across communities throughout Australia sets a new model of engagement by professional designers. It extends the range of skills and assistance for which landscape architects are recognised, as well as reinforcing the direct relevance of such assistance to the successful physical construction of environments – in this case a sculptural memorial in the public realm.
This project quite significantly ‘expands the scope of the profession in formative, forward-looking and thought provoking ways.’ The memorial and its processes are physical catalyst for social change. It asks that all Australians look deeply into how we as a society treat refugees and asks our government to reconsider its current practices. Manfred Steger writes that the vibrancy of civil society is based upon two essential conditions: the free circulation of ideas and opinions (diversity of ideologies) and the existence of civic spaces (parks, open markets, public squares, neighbourhood pubs, community halls, chat rooms, blog sites, etc.) in which cultural practices and identities can arise through inclusion and tolerance rather than though either uncivil violence within society or through the colonization by the state or the corporate economy. This project examines the spatial and temporal affects of the contemporary constructions of political ideologies relating to refugees. This project poses a greater question for the profession: If democracy is to survive in Australia then how will designers embody it in the physical and social fabric of our future cities?
introduction / overview / images / location / Projects
2008
