Making a new world
For the past year or so, Imperial War Museum London has given over its third floor to four related but very different exhibitions marking the end of the First World War a hundred years ago.
They come under the overarching title of Making A New World and have been accompanied by a programme of live music, performance and public debates, all addressing aspects of the aftermath of the conflict. This promotional video gives a flavour:
I’ve reviewed three of the four already:
- Renewal: Life after the First World War in Photographs
- I Was There: Room of Voices
- Mimesis: African Soldier
Across the corridor from Renewal and Voice is a door leading into a sequence of rooms which make up the immersive installation Moments of Silence. This installation was commissioned by IWM and created by the Tony and Olivier Award-winning artists 59 Productions,
The premise
A wall label explains the basis of the artwork: At the end of the First World War, plans were floated around Whitehall for a national Hall of Remembrance. A number of architects’ plans were drawn up and submitted but in the event nothing was built. The memorial at the Cenotaph in Whitehall is the nearest thing to a central, national focus for commemoration, scene of the annual televised Ceremony of Remembrance – alongside the thousands of memorials at the heart of every English village and town.
This installation is divided into three parts and intended to ‘explore’ a) the hall that was never built b) the moments of silence we share and c) how memorials are becoming increasingly digital.
Room one: the hall that was never built
The first room is relatively small and pitch black. As you enter you can see that in the corner of the walls opposite the entrance there’s what looks like a kind of mini-beach made of… when you look closely you realise it’s made of plastic.
On the ceiling above and behind you there’s a projector. It projects onto the two walls which you’re facing shapes and patterns and images which have been carefully designed to take account of the ‘beach’ shape. When I walked in the projection looked like a kind of waterfall of those small plastic shapes you get surrounding bulky goods in cardboard crates, thus creating a ‘pile’ of thousands of little multi-coloured plastic filler pellets. I watched as the flow of plastic bits spread across both walls as if it was snowing plastic packaging. Maybe this was meant to represent the sands of time.
Installation view of Moments of Silence at the Imperial War Museum, London
Room two: moments of silence
This room is pitch black. Nothing was happening. It was only when I read up about it on the Museum’s website that I learned that the room hosts:
a series of twelve atmospheric ‘silences’, a number of which were recorded at 11am on 11 November 2017. Predominantly collected from around the UK, the recordings include a wide-ranging variety of two minute silences, from the first ever recorded silence at the 1929 Cenotaph Remembrance Service to present-day silences at Everest Base Camp and HMS Ambush, an Astute Class Submarine.
Installation view of Moments of Silence at the Imperial War Museum, London
Room three: how memorials are becoming increasingly digital
This final room was dazzlingly bright and it took my eyes a few moments to adjust from the darkness to the fierce light. I had the space to myself, which is always a good thing in an installation.
Installation view of Moments of Silence at the Imperial War Museum, London
I wandered round the walls and suddenly realised they were not as plain white as I had at first thought. Rows of names were moving down them in that juddering, flickering way I’m familiar with from countless science fiction movies which feature digital printouts or information.
Looking closely I saw that the rows were made up of names of soldiers and the places where they served. And, as I watched, a kind of credit section came up, explaining that I’d just been looking at something to do with Iraq and something to do with the Commonwealth War Graves Commission.
Installation view of Moments of Silence at the Imperial War Museum, London
I didn’t really understand the meaning of the names which flickered by on the wall-sized screens although I’m guessing they were simply a list of names of soldiers who served in the British Army. Maybe the list is limited only to those who served in Iraq. Maybe it’s about the First World War campaigns in the area, maybe it’s something to do with British involvement in the region since the First Gulf War. Hard to tell. I left this cold, brightly-lit empty room puzzled.
18 months ago I visited the Commonwealth War Cemetery at Brookwood in Surrey. No amount of digital trickery can compare with the commitment of visiting such a place and the psychological impact of walking along row after row of beautifully maintained gravestones, each with the name of a dead soldier carefully engraved on it, and soaking in the sheer scale of the death and devastation caused by war. Then, maybe, finding a bench to sit down on and reflect on the enormity, and the waste. Some things can’t be digitised.
Part of the Brookwood Military Cemetery, Surrey. Photo by the author
Related links
- Moments of Silence continues at Imperial War Museum London until 31 March 2019
More Imperial War Museum reviews
World War One-related art reviews
- Aftermath: Art in the Wake of World War One @ Tate Britain (September 2018)
- Heath Robinson’s War Effort @ the Heath Robinson Museum (November 2018)
- Frank Brangwyn and the First World War @ William Morris Gallery (July 2014)
- The Great War in Portraits @ National Portrait Gallery (March 2014)
World War One-related book reviews
- The Vanquished: Why the First World War Failed to End 1917 to 1923 by Robert Gerwarth (2016)
- Lenin on The Train by Catherine Merridale (2016)
- Towards the Flame: Empire, War and the End of Tsarist Russia by Dominic Lieven (2015)
- Bloodlands: Europe between Hitler and Stalin by Timothy Snyder (2010)
- Forgotten Victory: the First World War Myths and Realities by Gary Sheffield (2001)
- A Small Yes and a Big No by George Grosz (1946)
- Complete Memoirs of George Sherston by Siegfried Sassoon (1936)
- Sagittarius Rising by Cecil Lewis (1936)
- All Quiet On the Western Front by Erich Maria Remarque (1929)
- The Middle Parts of Fortune: Somme And Ancre, 1916 by Frederic Manning (1929)
- Goodbye to All That by Robert Graves (1929)
- Undertones of War by Edmund Blunden (1928)
- In Our Time by Ernest Hemingway (1925)
- Storm of Steel by Ernst Jünger (1920)
- Under Fire by Henri Barbusse (1917)
Books & Boots 