The Veteran’s Memorial to the Living

I would use the funds from the Tour de Force grant to video-interview US military veterans and active duty service members in the DMV area as well as in other areas of the US, who have had experience of battle in the Middle East. I would edit the footage and sound track of these interviews together into a compelling video artwork to be featured in my final thesis exhibition, and later in other art gallery and museum shows. Additionally, I am collaborating with Katinka Hooyer (PhD) on the production of a website provisionally titled: 'The Veteran’s Memorial for the Living'. To produce this website, physical workshops would be conducted with the invited veterans. In these workshops, participants would bring an object that has sentimental or symbolic associations with their experiences in the battlefield. These objects would then be photographed, uploaded and presented alongside their written and filmed contributions to the platform. In this way, 'The Veteran’s Memorial for the Living' would become an ongoing, virtual ‘memorial’ – a ‘living’ archive where the stories of surviving military veterans are shared with the world. – Paul Emmanuel