The Korean War Veterans Memorial and Problems of Representation

This article examines the design history of the Korean War Veterans Memorial dedicated in Washington DC in 1995. It considers the attempt to achieve demographic inclusiveness by representing figures of every ethnic group in the sculptural depiction of the U.S. troops in Korea. It interprets this commemorative approach as an extension of the principle established in the commemoration of the Vietnam War in the 1980s, in which the norm of multifigure sculptural groups was intended to achieve the goal of demographic inclusiveness. The Korea memorial was also a response to the preference, particularly among right-wing, pro-military veterans, for commemorations consisting of realistic sculpture; the large number of figures (nineteen, making this an extremely large statuary group) allowed each of the four major armed services to be represented, and the inscribed pictorial wall allowed even more figures, representing each military specialist group, to be portrayed. In this way, the Korea memorial answered criticisms levelled at Vietnam War commemorations which generally concentrated on the depiction of foot soldiers. The essay’s argument places the creation of the multi-figure Korean War Veterans Memorial statuary group into the recent history of commemorative sculpture, but also contrasts it with a longer tradition, marked in the period from around 1890 to 1930, in which Washington was the site for other kinds of commemorative sculpture, including portrait statuary, historical works, and allegorical forms. The essay suggests that the shift to a kind of dumb literalism has involved a loss in the language of public sculpture. It advocates a rediscovery and reinvention of the language of symbolism following the extensio ad absurdum of the tendency to demographic and interest-group inclusiveness in the Korean War Veterans Memorial

Is sustainability certification for biochar the answer to environmental risks?

Biochar has the potential to make a major contribution to the mitigation of climate change, and enhancement of plant production. However, in order for biochar to fulfill this promise, the industry and regulating bodies must take steps to manage potential environmental threats and address negative perceptions. The potential threats to the sustainability of biochar systems, at each stage of the biochar life cycle, were reviewed. We propose that a sustainability framework for biochar could be adapted from existing frameworks developed for bioenergy. Sustainable land use policies, combined with effective regulation of biochar production facilities and incentives for efficient utilization of energy, and improved knowledge of biochar impacts on ecosystem health and productivity could provide a strong framework for the development of a robust sustainable biochar industry. Sustainability certification could be introduced to provide confidence to consumers that sustainable practices have been employed along the production chain, particularly where biochar is traded internationally