Witness Marks is an exploration of the words of soldiers and civilians, from all levels of command and all combatants, that experienced the conflict of World War One. These pieces are produced using the archaeological archival tool of the epigraphic squeeze, a technique for making archival copies of inscriptions in the field. Some archaeological squeezes made in the early 20th century outlived the carvings they were made from initially. My squeezes are a nod to these archives that live on beyond their original partners and an attempt to preserve the first person experiences of a conflict that has fallen out of living memory. No memorials to the conflict were inscribed with the everyday observations of soldiers on the ground; instead they often speak to glory, to sacrifice. By producing an epigraphic archive of inscriptions from non-existent or perhaps imagined memorials that could have or ought to have been made, I can bring some attention to the quotidian of war, to the daily experiences that can be overshadowed by the mythologizing of war that is particularly common in regards to WW1. The work is a commentary on memorials as well, whose function fluctuates from a site of mourning to a site of memorializing, eventually to a place of commemoration and then, in enough time, a totem to a forgotten event.
Each squeeze in the exhibition Darkness Shall Cover Me is a direct quotation from individuals who experienced aerial bombing in WW1— pilots, soldiers, and civilians alike.
