The project is part of the Ballymun regeneration process. It will consist of four hundred oak trees to replace, and in many ways improve upon, the seven concrete towers of Ballymun. Each of these towers was named after a Signatory to the 1916 Proclamation; hence, as the towers disappear so too does a national monument. The NMG, it is claimed, will remember the Signatories and what they stood for by providing "a unique place for present and future generations to reflect on their past and to reconsider how to participate in the present in order to forge a new future." Each tree will be accompanied by a plaque upon which subscribers will either state why they recall or identify (or not, as the case may be) with the aspirations of the Signatories or give their own answers to four questions posed by Gerz.³

Jochen Gerz: publicity image for National Memory Grove; courtesy Axis Ballymun (please note that the atttribution of this image to National Memory Grove is incorrect - see letters printed in CIRCA 114, Winter 2005)

This aims to be a living memorial, an 'anti-monument', not reified and suffering the death of veneration or complacency, as happens to many monuments, but growing and changing in response to future circumstances, just as the woodland grows and changes. Or, as Pat Cooke, Director of Kilmainham Gaol, puts it: "[there] is to be a symbolic process (a sinuous garden), a growing, living, cyclical thing, rather than a symbolic product (seven stolid towers)."⁴ Gerz's role is to initiate this 'symbolic process'; a process which he hopes will then be taken over entirely by members of the Ballymun community. He is offering the community the opportunity to give shape to some of the processes of regeneration now under way, and to construct some provisional sense of collective identity with which they can face the future. These, as far as I understand them, are the project's aspirations.

These aspirations correlate with the general logic of 'social aesthetics'. According to this logic, art has a direct social function, often within a process of regeneration. It follows loosely the principles of common ownership, collaboration, open access and democratic consensus, and then makes use of collective art practices as exemplars of these principles in an otherwise undemocratic and privatised world. Art practices that follow this logic develop in direct correspondence with their surroundings; which is to say, they must be comprehensible within their locale, and must "answer back to the activity that surrounds [them]."⁵ The 'activity' here, of course, is urban regeneration.

The above compares to the objectives of the Arts Council Arts Plan 2002-6 and the Civil Arts Enquiry, which are, roughly, that art should be integrated into social life; that it should be responsive, participatory and nonélitist; and that "culture and cultural activity [should be] at the centre of 'social and communal value'."⁶ Significantly though, 'social aesthetics' involves the extra-institutional development of artistic concepts and metaphors so as to integrate them into their social and cultural location, where they might be decoded and realised in non-art activities and disciplines. In the context of this integration, art does not simply respond to the surrounding world whilst remaining separate from it but, through its social commitment, "pulls (with art as instrument) agency into the artwork,"⁷ thus instigating a process of change and development. Agency is 'pulled into' the work 'from the bottom up', and, once initiated, this process is largely unpredictable and, more importantly, unmanageable. Unless the control exercised by the participants is well managed 'from the top down' and the project is not allowed to inspire imagination in such a way that sets reality into question, then cultural integration might exceed the current hegemony of institutional descriptions of cultural activity. Indeed, because 'social aesthetics' is initially constrained within the parameters of Art it must seek the transgression of its own categorical and institutional limits if it is to be socially effective.

So, the attempt to draw the agency of Ballymun residents into the project and the transgression noted above are interdependent, the success of one relying on the success of the other. According to conventional aesthetic criteria, the value of this process might be unrecognisable. But as Gerz says, "art doesn't need to be recognised [as art], aspirin doesn't need to be recognised in the water. It needs to be recognised in the body, and that is where art should be recognised too."⁸ The success of the project turns on the extent to which its various levels of negotiation, consultation and participation expand into the social 'body', so to speak. This would in no way depart from aesthetics, which originally studied the cognitive vagaries of sensuous, i.e. physical, experience per se, and not just those experiences proper to the conceptual boundaries of art.

But, to extend Gerz's 'body' metaphor further, his comparison between the NMG and the beneficial effects of aspirin points to an ambiguity in its role. It is possible that the NMG will be administered not so much as an analgesic but as a local anaesthetic, numbing the effects of shortfalls elsewhere in the regeneration process. This would deaden the senses of the social 'body', deflecting the outside world rather than incorporating it as a form of empowerment, impoverishing experience and, not least, isolating it from past memory.

Remembrance is especially important, of course, because it is the principal way in which agency might be 'pulled into' the project. To some degree, all memorials enable the public to engage with the events of the past and in remembering draw from them some significance for their own lives. But the NMG proposes a change from passive remembrance, such as that facilitated by most monuments, to a more active remembrance, which would serve as a socially engineered medium for the transferral and distribution of agency.

An example of active remembrance is provided by the Malangan carvings of, appropriately enough, New Ireland (in Papua New Guinea). During a mortuary ceremony, these carvings "provide a 'body', or more precisely, a 'skin' for a recently deceased person of importance."⁹ As a 'skin', the carving is a product of the social activity of the deceased which reconstitutes their dispersed agency so that it can then be redistributed amongst remaining family members. But as well as accumulating and containing past social relations this 'skin' features upon its exterior projections of future outcomes of these relations. Throughout the various ceremonial stages, the 'skin' is internalised as a memory image by participants, allowing them to grow a new skin of their own, so to speak, from which a new identity can be projected into the future. Thus, agency is mediated between past and future via remembrance.

In other words, the ceremony is a transaction, whereby the rights and responsibilities to a certain pattern of social relations are transferred. This transferral is completed at the end of the ceremony when a gift of money is made that 'kills' the carving as a ritual object and "entitles the donor to remember the image on display."¹⁰ After this gift is made, the carving itself becomes redundant, but its image is dispersed in the memories of participants, acting as both an index and a catalyst for future activity.

During this transaction, with objects becoming socially relevant only as internalised images, it is evident that physical objects do not serve simply as mnemonic devices to aid remembrance but as memory itself. Furthermore, it demonstrates that memory is extended, structural and collective, i.e., it is not "a property of individual minds, but a diverse and shifting collection of material artefacts and social practices," and it might serve as "a critical site for the generation and inflection of affective bonds."¹¹ We have, then, a model for active remembrance, which holds out the possibility of a fullness of experience "in the strict sense of the word, [where] certain contents of the individual past combine with material of the collective past."¹²

In light of this, I hope it is becoming clear that the trees of the NMG, in their role as symbolic objects within a process of development and renewal, must fall into obsolescence, at the same time that the spirit that invested them with symbolic weight broadens and intensifies. Likewise, the gifts of money that entitle subscribers to remember cannot also be thought of as entitling them to exclusive, private ownership as this would disavow the necessarily collective nature of remembrance.

Jochen Gerz: artist's impression of Ballymun Civic Plaza, part of National Memory Grove; courtesy Axis Ballymun (please note that the atttribution of this image to National Memory Grove is incorrect - see letters printed in CIRCA 114, Winter 2005)

he NMG is indicative of a recent shift away from the historical consciousness of modernity and towards postmodern collective memory. In a broad range of contexts, "the emergence of memory promises to rework history's boundaries,"¹³ if not to replace history altogether. As we have seen above, memory seems older, prehistorical even, and promises to enter people's lives with an immediacy and depth that is largely absent from historical discourse. Memory has been described as 'counter-historical', a resistance to the exclusions and generalisations of History. In this respect, the vagaries, irregularities and local bias of memory become its strengths; its disparate events cannot be preserved in the continuous, and allegedly universal, narrative of history.

But with the NMG, history cannot be eclipsed entirely: it is, in part, from historical memory that it will draw its vitality. Gerz has said that a place lacking any substantial history, such as Ballymun, must be aged rapidly, because this ageing enables a community to put down roots and to identify itself with a place, in a material as well as symbolic sense. In the case of Ballymun, it also requires that they take responsibility for their identification with the Seven Signatories.

Especially since the nineteenth century, history has been articulated through public monuments, with the latter encouraging deference to figures and events of national significance that remain, for the most part, detached from communal memory. Hence, the need for an 'anti-monument'; a need recognised long ago by Lenin's widow Nadezdha Krupskaya, who wrote, only five days after the former's death:

Comrades, Workers and Peasants! I have a great request to make of you: do not allow your grief for Ilich [Lenin] to express itself in external veneration of his person. Do not build memorials to him ... If you want to honour [him] - build day care centres, kindergartens, homes, schools.¹⁴

At the very least, the same might be demanded in honour of the Signatories. But, although the NMG might be 'anti-monumental', and therefore against the veneration of national heroes, it is still a memorial with a basis in ethnic national identity. How can such a place of national memory, even when it claims to make use of an open source strategy, negotiate between the exclusive, and often oppressive fictions of historical discourse and national identity? This problem is not necessarily avoided by recourse to memory: if memory has replaced romantic nationalism as a strategy against various forms of colonisation and oppression, still it falls prey to some of the same problems. Memory too often dismisses history as an illegitimate power tout court, whilst setting against it the supposedly authentic identity of history's victims. More precisely, this conflation of memory with identity threatens to privatise history, "as global experiences splinter into isolated chunks of ethno-racial substance."¹⁵ Perhaps memory is so attractive precisely because "it lends itself to the articulation of ethno-racial nationalisms that turn away from the cosmopolitan discourses of history."¹⁶ But if the NMG is to fulfil its aspirations in today's 'New Ireland' it cannot simply turn away from cosmopolitan discourses. One might think it vital, then, that the NMG remember the more internationalist orientation of the Signatory, James Connolly. Cosmopolitan and progressive living is not a threat to local cultural consciousnesses that entwine historical context with geopolitical location irrespective of such notions as nationality, race or ethnicity: but too often the development of identity is inimical to such living.

Furthermore, under cover of the historical scepticism of memory we find a new ritualism whose mystical enthusiasms are anything but progressive. Although memory might "re-enchant our relation with the world and pour presence back into the past,"¹⁷ it retains a quasi-religious and therapeutic tendency that favours conservatism over change, continuity over interruption, and is perhaps more interested in the sacred ghosts of the past than the more mundane concerns of the present.

Returning, lastly, to the question of the viewer: Gerz claims that "the viewer describes a state of poverty, and that poverty is the potential of the viewer...I take [the viewer] not only as a metaphor for consumerism in art, of course. He is defined today by consumerism of opinions even more than by consumerism of goods." The impoverished status of viewers makes them redundant as authors: they are alienated from the object of their contemplation; in fact, they are alienated in their contemplation. The residents of Ballymun have been, up to now, in the position of viewers, contemplating, but unable to act upon, the gradual demise of their living conditions. However, their shift to the position of 'author', or 'creative consumer', due largely to their own personal investments and the entitlements they receive in return, does not necessarily overcome their alienation; and their consumption, though 'creative', often remains a personalised activity, the power of which can be greatly exaggerated.

The motto of the creative consumer, or 'postproducer', is "how can we make do with what we have?" This emphasis on the freedom to choose from, and 'make do with', what has already been chosen, shifts the responsibility of choice onto the consumer. The 'burden' of the freedom to choose falls upon the individual rather than the structure in which choices become available. In this light, to not actively participate, to not make a personal investment, is to turn back from the 'psychological' anxiety of the freedom to choose; it is to be incapable of 'making do'.

Of course, the whole issue of public authorship hinges on choices made in the third, not first, person. The question then is not "how can we make do?" but "how can we make what we have do something else?"¹⁸: how can we make the real choice of actually transforming what we have? If remembrance can be used to ask this question and throw open a new horizon of choice, then the aspirations of the National Memory Grove might be realised and we might even find amongst the groves of Ballymun something like that "longed for tidal wave/ of justice rising up" (Heaney).

Jochen Gerz: amaptocare, dedication plaque for one of the trees, National Memory Grove; courtesy Axis Ballymun (please note that the atttribution of this image to National Memory Grove is incorrect - see letters printed in CIRCA 114, Winter 2005)

But lest we get carried away, it is easy to exaggerate the power of culture over politics. It must be remembered that there is no necessary connection between cultural self-realisation and political self-determination: or rather, the former is a necessary, though not sufficient condition of the latter. Most importantly, politics cannot be simply collapsed into culture, as so often happens with regeneration programmes that draw upon postmodern culturalism and identity politics. This is crucial here, as Irish cultural nationalism, such as that advocated by (most of) the Signatories, has generally advanced a unity of culture and politics, with the former "luminously expressed" through the latter. This can lead to a "lofty disdain for the political as such,"¹⁹ which is still very much with us. But such disdain would most likely lead to the compounding of past failures in the future.

This is not to say that the relation can simply be reversed, with immediate political imperatives transposed onto cultural practices: the two can be quite opposed to each other, such as when the intelligent response to past failures would go against "unsustainable" cultural aspirations.²⁰ In fact, it is precisely because there is discontinuity and noncoincidence between culture and politics that they remain open to one another. As Régis Debray has said, apropos of Gustave Courbet's work, the alleged forefather of social-committed art, "[an] art is truly 'political' when it is political in spite of itself and without wishing to be."²¹

There is a paradox here, of course, and Gerz exploits it. He has said that "the National Memory Grove does not address or answer a political, historical, national or academic agenda, if anything it is an artistic concept, a work of art."²² But, perhaps by withdrawing to the relative autonomy of an 'artistic concept', Gerz hopes to be political "without wishing to be." To forego definitive proclamations concerning political efficiency and to develop a sardonic relationship to end results is to trust that futility itself can be an act of protest. More to the point, if this project should fail to transgress its limits and its level of public authorship should not carry over into other areas of the regeneration process, then it would maintain its potential over and above its practicality. In this case, it would certainly draw attention to the limitations of cultural integration and regeneration within the present social situation. But more than this, the project would remain open to the spontaneous and unmanageable reactions that form the basis of authentic political actions.

The position of the artist would appear similarly futile, but he would, as something of a fool, be granted the freedom to transgress. This may be fitting given the feudal power structures of many Irish institutions, but it remains an open question as to whether it can do anything for the people of Ballymun. One can only hope that it is they who answer it.

Tim Stott is a critic based in Dublin.

¹'Create art - create the world'

²Published by the Axis Centre, Main Street, Ballymun, Dublin, 9, June 2005

³Gerz's questions are: "Can you imagine living outside of a democracy? Can there be justice for people without justice for the planet earth? Is Europe the quickest way to Irish unification? Is it ok to question the world we live in?" The presumptions that these questions make are certainly open to question (e.g. is Irish unification desirable? If so, on what basis, and in whose name? Are the democratic rights of the people of Ireland fully realised within the present parliamentary system? And so on.), but will not be discussed here.

⁴Quoted in National Memory Grove brochure, 2005

⁵Lars Bang Larsen,, Social Aesthetics: 11 examples to begin with, in the light of parallel history, Afterall, 01, 1999, p. 83

⁶Liam Greenslade, Class culture and social regeneration, or; why working class people shouldn't do art, Contexts, Vol. 3, No. 3, 2004, p. 42

⁷Kristina Ask, Art's reality, www.nifca.org/forum/archive/reaktion/artsreality.html

⁸Quoted in Sarah Browne, Green concrete, Contexts, Vol3, No. 3, 2004, p. 24

⁹Alfred Gell, Art and Agency: an Anthropological Theory, Clarendon Press, Oxford, 1998, p. 225

¹⁰ibid

¹¹Kerwin Lee Klein, On the emergence of memory in historical discourse, Representations, No. 69, winter 2000, p. 130

¹²Walter Benjamin, On some motifs in Baudelaire, Illuminations, trans. Harry Zohn, edited and with an introduction by Hannah Arendt, Fontana, Glasgow, 1973, p. 161

¹³Klein, op. cit., p. 128

¹⁴Quoted in Susan Buck-Morss, Dreamworld and Catastrophe: the Passing of Mass Utopia in East and West, MIT Press, Cambridge, Mass., 2002, p. 72

¹⁵Klein, op. cit., p. 144

¹⁶ibid, p. 143

¹⁷ibid, p. 145

¹⁸Dave Beech, Independent collaborative hospitality, Variant, Vol. 2, No. 22, spring 2005, p. 16

¹⁹Terry Eagleton, Nationalism and the case of Ireland, New Left Review, No. 1/234, March-April 1999, p. 47