Glass Bricks

Jingwen Li (M. Arch II, ’16). Collective Memory Glass Bricks, 2015.

…It is a current of continuous thought whose continuity is not at all artificial, for it retains from the past only what still lives or is capable of living in the consciousness of the groups keeping the memory alive.

Maurice Halbwachs, La Mémoire Collective (1950)

In contrast to History as a source, Jingwen Li’s Glass Bricks collect important objects of people’s lives, recalling sociologist Halbwach’s ideas of how collective memory comes together. As an original way to deal with the construction of the immediate past, it broadens the discussion of dealing with History/histories. Glass Bricks was an exercise for Sarah Caple’s Seminar Participation in Diverse Communities, Fall 2015.