I don’t know the reason, but people are always attracted by places of famous tragedies. I think that beside the will to honour memory of lost people, there is something unexplainable. Perhaps it is connected with try to put oneself in the place of a person, who experienced all the horror of the tragedy, and maybe just desire to touch something which made a noise in the world. Anyhow, people come in flocks to such places and related exhibitions.
One of spectacular examples is exhibition devoted to wreckage of the famous “Titanic”. I think that not everybody knows that Titanic was designed and built in the Northern Ireland, Belfast, on dockyard, which was the biggest in Europe that time. Expecting the centenary of the first and last departure of Titanic, there were created a travelling exhibition which was seen by more than 22 million people from all around the world. Now, this exhibition has been held for several months in Dublin. Having heard good send-offs, we could not help visiting the exhibition.
The exhibition organisers proved to be good psychologists and in order to deepen the impression from the visit of the exhibition; they decided to give not only just tickets but also boarding-cards of real people, participants of that unfortunate voyage.
Organizers have managed to keep emotional impact on spectators during the whole exhibition. For this, they applied incidental sounds of working marine engines and effect of reality of iceberg, when it is possible to touch its icy surface, and darkness of that night when Titanic was crushed.
Only at the exposition of interior of cabins of Titanic and newsreel of its construction, one could a bit “minimize” the sorrow, though visitors did not expect happiness.
At the end of the exhibition, according to boarding-cards of “Titanic”, visitors can find out who got a “lucky ticket” and whose were “black spots”.
The exit from the exhibition is through a gift shop, where one can buy things with symbolic of “Titanic”. Looking at the souvenirs we didn’t understand what this symbolic could represent. Memory of lost passengers of “Titanic” or possibility to raise money from everything.
Nevertheless, the exhibition makes us think about evanescence of human life and necessity to feel joy every moment of our life.
