The duty

The duty to remember. This is my translation of the French notion that appeared during the 1990s “Le devoir de mémoire”. The context of this notion is related to the events of the Second World War and the idea behind it is that if we remember, we can avoid making the same mistakes. It is now used to refer to tragic historical events in general. Although we speak of “duty” there is no personal obligation but rather a societal commitment that many actors participate in upholding. Historians uncover the facts, teachers and artists make them common knowledge and government officials fund and lead these projects. These efforts are what give life to the words engraved on the memorial of the Dachau concentration camp: “Never again”.

This article addresses what artists bring to the table, drawing examples from Nantes, the city I currently live in and city that owes its past growth to participation in the slave trade.  

A necessary reminder 

Do you, the reader, remember all the math formulas that you learnt throughout your education? Unless you’ve become a math teacher, the answer is probably no. Everyone forgets things and, with time, it may happen that an entire community forgets certain historical events. Art, whether it be entertainment (movies, books, video games …), culture (Monuments, museums, public art …) or other forms, is omnipresent and therefore serves as reminder and helps our society not to forget. One day, as I was walking from A to B, I realized that thousands of plaques were covering the street, I realized moments later that each one bore the name of a slave ship that had passed through Nantes at some point in time. Those plaques are part of the Memorial of the Abolition of Slavery by Krzysztof Wodiczko and Julian Bonder in Nantes and although I knew this city was heavily linked to slavery, I had forgotten until this artwork unearthed forgotten memories.  

Les Anneaux de la Mémoire is a Nantes association that aims to strengthen the awareness of the transatlantic slave trade. Enabling and fostering artistic expression is one of the areas into which they put most of their efforts and it has been since the 1990. Going to their latest exposition MANIFEST, Nouveaux Regards sur l’esclavage colonial (New visions on colonial slavery), was a big inspiration behind me writing this article.  

An emotionally engaging format 

Regarding this “duty to remember”, the artist can choose how to frame the information they have. Instead of making a list with all the names of those slave ships, Wodiczko and Bonder decided to display 2 000 plaques on the ground and in doing so invite the user to engage with the information. Art is more engaging than data. I have never read a historian’s report about the slave trade, but I have visited museums, read poems and watched films on the subject. Because art has a personality that data does not and is able to provoke emotional reactions in the audience.  

It is important to note here that artworks are very personal and are often left open to interpretation. This means that on one side, two different members of the audience can take away very different things from the experience, and on the other side art can reflect fiction or a point of view, which we must be sure not to confuse with the hard truth. That being said, I believe points of view are also integral to the duty to remember. Certain cultures have been heavily scarred in history and it is important to realize that those scars are still present today and that the transatlantic slave trade or the holocaust are just things that happened and are no longer relevant. One artwork of MANIFEST, Nouveaux Regards sur l’esclavage colonial, Paroles de Nègres (Words of Negroes), shows how the present of Grand Anse, a town in Guadalupe, is still very much governed by their heritage, as its economy relies on sugar cane. Except now, with most of the factory workers also having to work as cane farmers.   

“Never again” 

To sum up, I believe that the art is essential to our duty to remember because it often offers a more accessible and attractive way to remind us as a society of what has happened in the past and must never happen again.  

Victor Dampierre