Abstract:
My Honors Thesis is a creative project related to the Falling Whistles installation movement. It is a concept museum utilizing a shipping container that narrates the issues in Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC). More than 6 million people have died in the last decade alone. At this stage, about 1,500 people continue to lose their lives daily. Since WWII, the war in DRC has been labeled as the world's deadliest war. The natural resources used for consumer electronics are vastly found in this country which is the root cause of all evident conflicts and destruction, political instability and massive numbers of death. As such, even young boys are forced to fight. They have been abducted from their families, tied up, beaten, and forced to kill the other rebels. There is also more sexual violence in DRC than any other country in the world. Children who are too young to hold a gun are forced to carry only a whistle and stand in the front lines of battle. The only purpose of which is to create enough noise to scare off the enemies. Their bodies are use as temporary barricades to accept bullets like in the frontlines of battles. With all these wars, a man named Sean Caras so made a plan and a promise to end the war in DRC. He created an organization called Falling Whistles which uses DRC's weapon as a proactive voice. The organization educates the public on the happenings in DRC with the hope of one day ending this deadly war. They encourage everyone to be a whistleblower for peace. In order to spread the word of this organization, the goal of my final project is to design a Falling Whistles concept museum. By combining theories of my interior design major as well as from my peace studies minor, I have designed a concept museum using a shipping container that will bring awareness of this deadly war to different cities in the United States (Carasso).
