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Spectral Flesh – Remembrance

University of the Free State

Arran Wood

The Angola-South African War left extensive scars and remains a raw place in the lives of many South Africans. Yet the memory and memorialisation of the conflict has become a shrouded spectre. One of the most obscured fallouts of the war was the fact that South Africa managed to construct nuclear weapons and became the first nation to decommission their nuclear arsenal voluntarily. Still, the majority forgets the haunting effects in the hearts of those conscripted into the war and the suffering enforced by it. The manifestation of this amnesia-like state comes in the form of the nuclear weapons site, rusting and forgotten. Through a symbolic repurposing of decommissioned firearms in a foundry and the remembrance of spectres from the site in an inverted monument, a design is proposed to reveal the forgotten and
censored. The architecture of spectral remembrance attempts to explore the role the built can play as a mediator and reminder of forgotten conflicts.

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