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“Reaching
Out” Series Global “Memorial To Lost Childhoods”
Lost Childhoods
Throughout the world tragic conditions exist where children
are used as soldiers, sold into slavery, used for prostitution
and pornography, live in inner cities filled with violence,
crime and drug wars, are subjected to the maiming and fear
of ever present war. Children are raped, tortured, displaced
and starved as pawns in political terrorism.
Children who are repeatedly and severely
exploited lose their opportunity to have a childhood. The
loss of childhood is a tragic injustice that is irreversible.
The robbery of their innocence is at times so brutal it
may be referred to as soul murder.
“Reaching Out”
Series
The Global Memorial to Lost Childhoods is planned as a series
of seven “Reaching Out” Figures that provide
a voice for exploited children. The seven massive figures
would be placed in a circle like a large modern day Stonehenge
dedicated to acknowledging the tragic adversity faced by
exploited children and to creating a better world for children.
In the center of the circle would be
two large midwife’s hands holding a newborn emerging
from the stone of mother earth. On the outside of the “Reaching
Out” figures a series of sculpture pedestals would
be created out of bronze reliefs of children’s art
works. Resting atop these pedestals would be bronze figurative
sculptures of children playing and family vignettes.
A described to follow, the process
of doing the research for the sculptures, making them and
having them viewed would provide a unique means of addressing
issues of the most severely abused and neglected children
in the international community.
Direct Stories of Exploited
Children
It is planned that fifty-six children would be interviewed
on video tape and have cast molds made of their hands. The
children would be relating what happened to them and how
they feel people of the world should respond. Children who
live through cruel adversity have deep wounds. They also
have inner strength that they have honed and they have special
insights that are conferred through first hand experience.
The Global Memorial to Lost childhoods
would seek to hear the stories of exploited children and
share with the world the wisdom these children have earned.
The knowledge of these children would be gained through
their direct voices as recorded in video taped interviews
and through the special attributes that would be available
by way of engagement and further through interpretation
with the arts. These extraordinary tapes of children telling
their stories and recommendations would be given to the
UN Human Rights Commission. It would be expected that the
children would be speaking as experts and that they would
be giving testimony that is to be acted upon.
The Voice of the Soul
Through the videotapes UN Delegates or Representatives would
hear the voices of these tormented children. They would
look into the eyes of the children and receive the proud,
shamed and pleading messages of their souls. Many listeners
would perhaps be surprised by the degree to which the exploited
young would speak for the desire to have protection and
prevention more for others than for themselves. They would
likely be impressed by the depth of awareness and understanding
that these tortured children would command. They would be
humbled by the profound compassion and hope that these young
souls still carry. They would also be witnesses to the profound
self blame, shame, deadness and soul murder that would reside
in the minds and hearts of these children who were at one
time innocent beings.
Art as the Search for Truth
The gravest of travesties are beyond description and understanding
in the realm of words. Deep trauma is actually processed
through the limbic system in the nonverbal hind brain --
neurologically a great distance from the rational and cognitive
processing of the frontal cortex.
Art and the activities of the artist
can reach where the tortured spirit struggles. The artist
can not only record the unspeakable tragedies of the children’s
history, but works of art can carry the rest of us into
the special dimension that holds the understandings and
lessons that these children need us to comprehend.
Monument Design
A Global Memorial to Lost Childhoods would be dedicated,
through cultural activity, to addressing concerns of child
exploitation and create a better world where children thrive
and fulfill their destiny.
The video recorded stories and recommendations
of exploited children would be a central focus of background
research and content of the relief artworks making up the
bronze surface of the memorial.
The Memorial would be composed of seven
bronze “Reaching Out” sculptures ten feet tall
by fifteen feet wide each.
Draping the figures shoulders and dropping
to the ground would be quilted shawls that provide the area
for the cast hands of eighty-four exploited children and
the relief artworks of three hundred and thirty-six professional
sculptors.
The seven large figurative sculptures
would be laid out in a large circle much like a modern bronze
Stonehenge. In the middle of the circle would be a gentle
fountain with the large bronze baby and midwife’s
hands in its centre.
The Artist as Witness
In an effort to help the world hear the voice and gained
wisdom of these exploited children a global team of sculptors
would attempt to give form to these children’s depositions
and recommendations during a 3 week sculpture symposium.
For some artists their work may attempt
to give the world the child’s message. Other artists
may attempt to portray the world’s message to a child.
Artists may struggle to convey to a child what was touched
in the artists’ heart as witness. The child’s
message to other exploited children may be the voice in
some of the sculptures.
Without a doubt, each sculpture would
be unique like the children and the artist. For certain,
the relief sculptures would be the voice of the deepest
spirit and heart of the individual artists.
Sculptors in Collaboration
At a four week sculpture symposium each child’s taped
interview would be reviewed by four artists who would make
a relief sculpture inspired by the child’s message.
The global sculptors’ symposium
would take place simultaneously in fourteen different university
art studios. Each location of the symposium would have four
groups of four artists with each four person team working
with four reliefs responding to one child’s story.
This would allow two hundred twenty-four artists to portray
their response to fifty-six children on the two sides of
the seven “Reaching Out” sculptures.
The fourteen locations would be connected
by Internet streaming for the four weeks of the sculpture
symposium. This would create an event of a global community
of artists collaborating in one sculpture symposium that
would be taking place around the planet.
Participatory Web Site
The project and issues of the exploitation of children would
be presented through a project web site. During the sculpture
symposiums a real time multimedia program would make the
creation of the monument available for global viewing.
A web site, www.ReachingOut.cc, would
promote a campaign called “Reaching Out with a Hand”.
Web site visitors would be asked to make hand print outlines
and messages through an interactive web page or on a piece
of paper. The “HandPrints” would be collected
and placed inside the monument figures prior to unveiling
the monument.
The HandPrint artworks and messages
would allow millions of children and their supporters to
be part of the monument.
The Power of Visualization
The HandPrint drawings and written messages inside the monument
figures would be visualizations, prayers, goals, mission
statements for how children should be treated and what we
must do to promote change. A single visualization is a powerful
tool to promote transformation. The visualization/prayers
of millions of HandPrints filling the “Reaching Out”
figures would collectively be a profound energy and force
standing beside children who need to see the world become
a better place for them.
Information on Child Exploitation
The Web site would carry information on child exploitation
and have links for further information and places where
people can get involved in responding to the needs of these
children.
Film and Video
Video taping of images of the artworks, the artists working
and interviews of the artists would occur in addition to
the video taping of the interviews with children.
This video archive would be used to
make broadcast quality shorts, public service announcements,
a documentary on the exploitation of children and a documentary
on the project.
The shorts would be for the promotion
of the project and would be attached to showings of the
documentaries to further request people to give HandPrints
for inclusion in the monument.
A Cyberspace/Bronze Age Phenomenon
When the sculpture symposium were completed the relief works
would be scanned by 3D scanners to be turned into digital
files.
The digital files which would be the
combined form of the fourteen sculptures would be relayed
to a succession of multiple points around the world. The
work from Cairo may be “beamed” in progression
to Anchorage, Tokyo, Paris, Moscow, Los Angeles, and a variety
of other points before being 3 dimensionally printed out
in the Toronto Studio.
When fourteen studios would be simultaneously
uploading and sending their digital art files, the Memorial
to Lost Childhoods would exist as a cyberspace sculpture
encircling the globe. The bronze age and the twenty-first
century technologies would be wed through a global arts
community to stand up for the most helpless children of
our planet.
Permanent Installation and
Location
If this vision were to become a reality the circle of “Reaching
Out” figures for the Global “Monument to Lost
Childhoods” should be permanently installed and unveiled
at a location that is meaningful to the care and well being
of children, especially children at risk. The site should
have an interpretive wall that would tell about the Monument’s
creation and the brave children who were central to its
realization. The UN offices in New York or Geneva are obvious
locations for this important global artwork.
The Global “Memorial to Lost
Childhoods” would exist for generations as a tribute
to the spirit of exploited children and those who serve
to better these children’s conditions. It would stand
as a reminder of our need for commitment and vigilance to
protect innocent children from the worst of treatment that
can be inflicted on people.
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