A number never fully eternalizes the magnitude of a disaster.\u00a0 Whether these numbers are the economic cost for recovery, area of impact, value of damages, people injured, or even deaths; numbers lack the personalization that could affect foreign attention and deep emotion.\u00a0 However as individual numbers become personified and more realistic through details, feelings of sorrow, and depression, a global connection spreads. Ai Weiwei\u2019s work entitled Namelist, <\/i>with the audio recording Remembrance <\/i>playing in the background successfully transforms one room into a memorial that connects the viewer to every single young student that died so tragically on May 8th<\/sup>, 2008 from the Sichuan earthquake.<\/p>\n The Sichuan earthquake has been significantly underreported in the United States and few Americans fully comprehend the magnitude of this natural disaster.\u00a0 As regards to foreign disasters, over the past ten years more media attention has been given to the East Asian Tsunami, Great East Japan Earthquake, and the 2010 Haiti earthquake.\u00a0 As a result, the Sichuan disaster failed to get the long term global support and recognition.\u00a0 Nevertheless this 7.9 earthquake centered in the Sichuan province had staggering numbers that could easily rival the magnitude of any recent disaster.\u00a0 According to the BBC recovery page written five years post May 12th<\/sup> earthquake the facts are unfathomable: nearly 87,150 people missing or dead, 4.8 million people homeless, over $137 over spent on recovery and with over 191 million USD in damages billion, this earthquake represents the second most costly earthquake since the start of the 20th century.[1]<\/a>\u00a0 However numbers only mean so much.\u00a0 Weiwei\u2019s piece draws attention to this disaster and forces you to think about every 5,196 students that died during this earthquake.<\/p>\n Ai Weiwei\u2019s design is intrinsically simple; white walls, white paper, black grid-like writing, and a small audio player make up the entire room.\u00a0 Nevertheless, the instant you fully entire the room, you are instantly struck, both physically and emotionally, by strong feelings of power, horror, and wonder.\u00a0 The voice box, playing a foreign recording, only adds to the eerie sense of confusion regarding the details and reasoning behind such a design. Slowly as you approach the wall, one realizes that these are not random writings but instead memorials.\u00a0 For me, not knowing any meaning behind the manuscript, the only thing that made sense was the numbers.\u00a0 As I pieced together that these numbers were either birthdays or ages, the full power hit me.\u00a0 Not only were all these children born after I was, their lives were cut short nearly five years prior.\u00a0 As I examined further, the worst part was the vast amounts of empty spaces.\u00a0 These children had no record for their birthday or age.\u00a0 Weiwei\u2019s work hit me as the grids and numbers were not just art, but memorials for actual humans.<\/p>\n Like many memorials of such nature[2]<\/a> Ai Weiwei\u2019s main purpose for listing names like this was to pay equal tribute to every victim.\u00a0 No one name differs from the other and no name has higher importance than anyone else.\u00a0 However, unlike the Vietnam Memorial and the National September 11th<\/sup> memorial Ai Weiwei\u2019s decision to memorialize just children adds the horror of this disaster.\u00a0 By choosing just children found in schools, Weiwei targets destruction of this earthquake as a whole.\u00a0 Clearly children impact everyone because of their vulnerability.\u00a0 But when you learn that this memorial that overwhelms you in size represents only a portion of all victims (roughly 6% of all deaths) the visualization of the entire memorial befuddles viewers.\u00a0\u00a0 A brilliant choice of space, Weiwei covers the entire room and skillfully presents the boards at angles so no person can actually read the top quarter.\u00a0 Your eyes wander, knowing that the size alone makes the imagery of ever human nearly impossible.\u00a0 Yet, as the audio plays behind you, one is forced to realize that every name represents one child lost.<\/p>\n A memorial like Weiwei\u2019s personifies a disaster and connects viewers to the pain and tragedy often only felt by those directly affected.\u00a0 As historians studying disaster, we must realize that numbers alone never tell the entire story.\u00a0 The loss of one life is tragic; the loss of 5,196 is a travesty that words alone cannot summarize.\u00a0 Art work like this makes you realize a death toll is so much more than a number.\u00a0 When looking back on disasters we must stay mindful of the physical destruction, yet realize how there is no value on life.\u00a0 These children all had their lives cut short and a death toll cannot fully encapsulate the loss every family must still be going through.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/p>\n
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