For the second part of our project we focused on the importance of remembering past, dramatic events by using memory. The memorial that we chose to focus on was the Air France 447 that commemorates the accident that happened on 1st June 2009. At first, we researched the victims of that event and we chose to print A5 pictures for all the ones that more informations are available to us.
Underneath there is a collage of the victims that we chose for our final display:
Looking at those pictures, we realised that each photograph was taken differently and, as our aim was to portray the whole accident and remember the various victims, we chose to make all of them red on a white background so they would become more similar to each other as we wanted to show that each of them had the same end to their life.
With the use of only two colours, the pictures became more anonymous and equal to each other, so this helped use to show this massive and tragic event. Those pictures were printed in three kinds of paper: a thick one that was not transparent in order to show that we found more informations about those people, a quite transparent one to start showing how the memories of those people started to fade away and a completely transparent one to show a complete loss of memory with few informations about some individuals.
The choice to leave some empty spaces was to represent the people that were not identified or that their informations still remain unknown. This collage of pictures was displayed on the screen that showed a white background in order to reveal the different quality of the papers and make the white spaces to pop out. The white video was accompanied by different media coverage that explains the accident. At first, only one voice is speaking about the event and, later, various ones speak over each other and this is to meaningfully enhance the importance of the disaster. Meanwhile the voices are speaking, the sound of a hearth rate monitor create a sense of disturbance and shock to the viewers. This is to make them completely immersed into the tragedy and the importance of remembering past events.
Below the video of the white background with the voices of the media coverages:
This video is to show the reactions in the viewers and it is to quickly hint the atmosphere of the unconventional tour in the Père Lachaise cemetery:
