Healing the scars of violence with art

Krzysztof Wodiczko made his reputation 20 years ago taking on big political issues. At the height of the apartheid era, he projected a swastika onto South Africa's embassy in London. In recent years, he's added audio to his multimedia projects and turned from the political to the personal. In 1998, he used audio and video projected onto the Bunker Hill Monument to tell the stories of mothers from Charlestown who'd lost children to murder. When he was invited to mount one of his projections in St. Louis by Washington University, he says he once again wanted to give voice to people who had lost loved ones to violence.

Wodiczko says in his work the stories and images of the participants animate and at the same time draw power from the monument or the building on which they're projected. In St. Louis, he says, the best place for his project is the city's most historically powerful building, the old courthouse. It was the place where, in 1846, the slave Dred Scott sued for his freedom, and it sits in the center of downtown, part of the national park that includes the Gateway Arch. Wodiczko envisioned projections of giant hands gesturing sometimes to the city's north side, where much of the crime takes place, and sometimes downtown to the nearby municipal and federal court buildings where the crimes are punished. Chief of museum services at the old courthouse, Frank Morris, says the park agreed to be part of the work when it appeared to be about St. Louis' history.

•	In St. Louis, Healing the Scars of Violence with Art National Public Radio's "All Things Considered", Friday, April 16, 2004 Byline: Robert Siegel

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