"In the third circle am I of the rain
Eternal, maledict, and cold, and heavy;
Its law and quality are never new."
Dante Alighieri, Canto 6 of Divine Comedy - Inferno
The descent to this hell is dark. Left at Darwin, the laminated sign reads. After a few minutes wandering among the iron works, vaulted ceiling, and glass panes filtering colorful patches of sunlight onto the marbled blue floor, the doorway beckons visitors by its juxtaposition. Under the stone archway, the platform dissolves into shallow steps delving deep in the hazy maze below. Glass prisons rise from the mirth, cramped together to occupy as much space as possible and give the illusion of a labyrinth without any true walls. Each cell contains a cramped assortment of oddities: pottery, statues, jewelry, even skulls and shrunken heads. Each curiosity stacks precariously atop another, entire histories and civilizations confined to the suffocating oxygen. A small, crinkled brown tag is strung to each item like toe tags on cadavers. Yet no bodies are entombed here, only memories and ghosts and hollow skulls. The whole room reeks of rot. And I stand atop the staircase overwhelmed by the stench of gluttony.
Gluttony? Can a museum be gluttonous? I speak of overconsumption, hyperstimulation brought about by the overcrowded displays that literally line every single wall of the three-story expanse. And I make this assertion as someone who absolutely adores the study of the microcosm of culture. The Pitt Rivers Museum simply contains too much memory to sort through. Every single artifact tells a story, one reduced to the same description given to a human cadaver. The experience serves more to brag about the expanse of the British Empire than a meaningful examination of each time, culture, or person depicted. So I stumbled up those steps after traipsing in the slick of vile slush of the Third Inner Circle, my own personal hell.
After shaking the sludge from my boots, I found myself in a cornered-off hallway. Brightly lit yet utterly empty, this little prison contained an entirely different monster. La Jungle de Calais. Now the name stirred something deep within me, distant recollections of the same labyrinthine illusions, cramped histories all trapped within the same space. My French language and culture class had spent a number of weeks on the refugee camp deemed La Jungle. Housing approximately 8000 refugees, 1200 of which were orphans, it represented a hope to reach the United Kingdom at the height of the wars in Iraq, Syria, Sudan, Eritrea, and Afghanistan. When Britain refused to open its doors, the French officials brought bulldozers and machines of chaos to the already hostile environment -- this shantytown was built upon a wasteland. Most of the refugees who died doing so trying to cross the channel and reach the promise land.
Yet Britain's doors remained shut. Impermanence is a strategy of border governance. The spectacle of bulldozers destroying these haphazard homes distracts from the encroaching violence. These displaced people were denied not just shelter and property but the very ability to exist within the landscape. Any memory of La Jungle was forcefully silenced, evidence erased. So much of what we can recollect is tied to place, to objects, photos, and physical symbols of the little histories tell ourselves. I want to share the culture of Calais, explore its terrifying perplexity in later work that delves into cinematographic representations of memory. For now, I leave you with their story. If you want to learn more or share their memory, check out #LandeOx, a campaign dedicated to explicating La Jungle de Calais and the incredible people who endured, triumphed, and learned to thrive in a wasteland. Memory is the story we tell ourselves. And we cannot let it down beneath gluttonous and ravenous attempts to destroy the material which we exchange memory. It cannot sit idle, cramped, and tucked neatly away in darkened glass displays.
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