The Flying Ace And The Radio Boy
Open AccessMy Grandfather, William Casey was a Private 1st Class in the United States Army Signal Corp stationed in the Pacific Theater during World War II. My first cousin thrice removed, Kurt Bertram von Döering was a Luftwaffe Generalleutnant for Nazi Germany and Major General commanding the Jagdfliegerführer 2. These two relatives become points of reference as I interrogate the dichotomy of war, patriotic duty, national pride, family and loss. Cyanotypes printed on silk flags embed the imagery of my cousin Döering, The Flying Ace upon the same material that structured his parachute, a device that saved his life on more than one occasion. Chlorophyll prints on banana leaves depict my grandfather Casey, The Radio Boy in the small moments of reprieve and joy he could find. The banana leaf, native to Papua New Guinea in the Pacific Theater is also rich in polyphenol oxidase, an enzyme used to treat Parkinson’s, the disease which in the end took my grandfather’s life. Poetry carved into slabs of wood in relief provide deeper insight into the lives of these soldiers and the harrowing experience of war. These two are individuals of a greater whole, representing either side of a global conflict and narrating their journeys through this reconstructed archive. However, this collection is not complete and never could be. What is the past and how does it become recorded? How does nationality, upbringing and personal identity establish this recording into individual memory and how does this enter into the collective consciousness? How do these memories become distilled through time and reemerge in the present, and how much truth can we draw from them? These are questions I grapple with in my work. Answers are elusive as I explore the archives left behind for me, fill in the blanks of the memories of these two individuals and the collective memories that we have come to inherit.
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