Memoirs of World War One
This project investigates epistolary correspondence from the front lines back home to New Zealand to explore the relationship between spatial belonging and dislocation during wartime. It focuses particular attention on the domestic rituals and interior details described in the letters written by Second Lieutenant Jack Stanley Pryce of the 1st Battalion Otago Infantry Regiment to his family. The practice analyses Pryce's narratives using a range of digital and analogue methods to produce a series of diorama’s representing a reverie of home and belonging. Designed for the Pou Kanohi, New Zealand at War Gallery in Auckland's War Memorial Museum, the project offers a narrative-driven contribution to this memorial space. The dioramas are hybridised cabinets of curiosity: gateways between two modes of living and dwelling, serving as transitional objects that links two different modes of time and space. All the boxes have three parts. Each one consisting of a diorama, an illusion and a drawer. The illusion is a motion captured animated virtual recreation of Pryce performing certain domestic activities with the diorama as the backdrop of the mise-en-scene. The drawer is a pocket, which contains a copy of the original letters that Pryce had written, which informs the viewer of the scenario being reimagined. Each element is carefully curated to emphasize the personal journey of the soldier to the audience making each encounter an intimate and unique experience for the viewer. Each entire set becomes a manifestation of a domesticated spatial location where the concept of home becomes a medium of constant shifting and navigating through spatial habitats. In this project place is understood as a temporary spatial heterotopia: a place of many places. This results in the creation of an illusion of transcedence that is grounded and real. The dioramas seek to question the role a monument plays in remembrance, where the role of the monument isn’t only to be a mnemonic tangible object of recollection but also an imagined space of absent narratives, individuals and places.
DIORAMA HOME
Jack Stanley Pryce was born in England in1892. Pryce was a dreamer who loved reading books, natureand most importantly his family . In 1902Pryce’s father passed away and his widowed mother Sarah married Thomas Chambers from Invercargill in the pursuit of financial security for her children. The family moved to New Zealand on 13 November 1911. On 12 July 1912, Thomas Chambers also passed away. In 1914, a few days after war was declared, the New Zealand Expeditionary Force (NZEF) was formed and offered to the Imperial Government. Jack Pryce was working at the Black Mount Station when war was declared. Pryce joined his regiment at the age of 22 alongside his two brothers Charlie and George. He was deployed to Gallipoli in June of 1915 and fought at Chunuk Bair in August. Posted to the Western Front in July of 1917, he survived the battles of Broodseinde and Passchendaele. As the war approached its final stages, Jack was the only brother remaining at the frontline the other two having been evacuated with wounds. In his letters home Pryce emphasises the different ways that domestic rituals and spaces were re-created during the war to create a sense of belonging. These letters are a vital context because they highlight the notion of domestic spaces being re-interpreted or re-imagined on the front lines. This diorama shows Jack within his bedroom
DIORAMA GALLIPOLLI
25 August 1915
My dear mother,
………..It was strange spending my 23rd Birthday in the firing line. We have to cook for ourselves here, so I made some rissoles out of bully beef, onions and flour and fried them in bacon fat and also, I made a jam roly-poly. Just flour and water and jam, no baking powder or anything else. It was pretty heavy but not bad. For breakfast I grind up some biscuits and make porridge out of them. It’s surprising what a man can do with very little. But oh! For some of your cooking once again. We sometimes sit and talk about what we would like and what we are going to ask for when we get back……
All from your ever-loving son
Jack
In this diorama , Pryce is in the trenches of Galipolli, cooking and preparing his meal + sounds of his spatial locations.
DIORAMA FRONTLINES
France
3.6.18
My dear mother,
……………… I have been busy this last two days building a dug-out myself. It is nearly finished now and looks all right. It is about 6ft. square and 4ft high. The walls are lined with sandbags and for a carpet I have got a piece of sacking. There is a fireplace in one corner and a table in another. Along the other side I have fixed up a bed. The table is made from four pieces of wood with the top of an ammunition box nailed on and makes a first-rate writing desk. The bed consists of an old weather worn stretcher that looks as though it had carried good many wounded in its time………….
In this diorama , Pryce is in his man-made dug-out reading the letters he has just recieved. cooking and preparing his meal + sounds of his spatial locations.
