Permanent Memorial to All Victims of Chemical Weapons
The Memorial consists of a maple tree situated in a dune landscape.
The maple tree carries a solar panel array that is used as a power source for a webcam. The live video captured by the webcam is displayed on the Memorial’s website.
Granite paving, inscribed with a poem dedicated to the victims of chemical weapons, is placed around the tree.
Voebe de Gruyter, a Dutch sculptor who was born in The Hague, was commissioned to design the Memorial.
Ms de Gruyter describes the Memorial in her own words:
“In memory of the people lost and victimized by the use of chemical weapons during history and to reaffirm respect for life I would like to envision a work consisting of three 'living' trees:
- A real tree – growing
- A symbolic tree, shaped in small solar panels -growing through the human gaze.
- And a website - growing in structure through the inscription of people throughout the world. The website is available at www.thismeldingtree.org
In the crystallized tree, I use light-photons as a key element; they are eternal, they reflect and emanate from the beginning of the universe; secondly, through the use of solar cells, they activate the process of crystallization, a chemical process. Solid matter becomes fluid. In my concept the glance or the gaze of an individual and their presence before the tree contribute towards this melting process.
When one looks at the memorial
Your glance adheres to the surface
The more directed and intense the glance,
the more permanent the adhesion
The constructed tree will consist of small solar cells, enough to support the webcam. The surface of the cells is made of silicon which works as a semiconductor. The real tree inhales carbon-dioxide and exhales pure oxygen. The crystallized tree inhales photons of light and generates electricity, which powers a webcam filming the trees. It can collect glances through reflecting photons, rendering it visible, by daylight and streetlight, 24 hours a day.
The website grows in a parallel way with the trees, through successive visitors who can leave their own traces in a network of the memorial.
The growth of the physical tree will be measured and compared from time to time with the growth of the constructed tree and the website (the quantity of persons who glanced at the tree and left their names.)
The parallel growth of the three trees, through photosynthesis, glances, and traces are then progressively recorded and leave their own signs, both in website and on site.
On 9 May 2007, Queen Beatrix unveiled the permanent Memorial dedicated to all Victims of Chemical Weapons. The Memorial symbolizes the ever-growing global will to eliminate chemical weapons and to establish a world free of chemical weapons.