1
Objects as links between person and place
Introduction
Memorial places, such as funeral monuments, roadside memorials and cemeteries, can be said to reveal the politics of religious space as in the tension between sacred and secular and between private and public interests.[1] At the same time they also reflect a given society’s religious structures, cultural differences and social orderings, as well as the changes in these matters over time.
New ways of dealing with the deceased continuously leave traces in the space of death. From the churchyard, as the sacred heart of the city,[2] to the anonymous placing of cremated remains in extra-urban cemeteries and, more recently, to the practice of strewing the ashes outside the borders of the cemetery, in an environment that is specific to the deceased. Some researchers even speak of a shift: from an institutional to an individual notion of death, leaving its mark on ritual activity, memorials and their places of ritual.[3]This individualisation of death is further clearly visible in what is commonly known as spontaneous memorialisation,[4] such as the placing of flowers, candles, photos and personal objects at sites of motor vehicle accidents, murders, catastrophes, terrorist attacks, or the like.
One of the first Swedish examples of spontaneous memorialisation wasthe memorial site on Sveavägen in Stockholm,created shortly after the murder of the Swedish Prime Minister Olof Palme in 1986. Theincreaseofspontaneous memorial places in Swedenthen seems tofollow the occurrence of four great disasters in a time span of only ten years, starting with wreckage at sea in 1994, when the ship M/S Estonia was swallowed by the Baltic Sea,leading to the death of 852 people, of which 580 were Swedish citizens. This incident was followed by a fire at a local meeting hall in Gothenburg in 1998, killing 63 young people attending a discotheque, which in turn was followed by the murder of the Swedish Foreign Minister Anna Lind in 2003.[5] The last disaster was the international catastrophe of the Tsunami in South-East Asia in 2004, which caused the death of 702 Swedes.
At the murder site of Olof Palme,a memorial spacesoon grew largeas many people came toplace flowers directly on the site of death. In this particular case the flowers were red rose,which is the symbol of the political party Socialdemokraterna of which Palme was the head.This grieving practice was then to be expandedin front of the burnet out meeting hall in Gothenburg, where an immense memorial space was created shortly after the fire, containing memorial objects such as flowers and candles as well as more personal thingslike poems and teddy-bears.[6]Moreover, reports of Swedish families grieving their loved ones lost in the Tsunami has revealed yet another form of memorialisation, such as the creation of a memorial in ones own home.Some survivors even tell of the act of bringing home sand from the beach where the deceased went missing. A recently conducted interview study of Swedish roadside memorialisation shows that the practice of creating domestic memorials, as well as the practice of bringing things from the accident site back home, isalso to be found in connection to survivors of motor vehicle accidents.[7]
The personal object - a positive link
Why the practice of spontaneous memorialisation seems to be increasing is a question asked by many researchers,among others the cultural geographers Kate Hartig and Kevin Dunn.[8] In a survey on roadside memorials in Newcastle, New South Wales, Australia, Hartig and Dunne suggests that roadside memorials may be filling a gap in the trend towards gardens of remembrance and plaque-gardens, leaving the mourning no personalised space to visit. The formality and strict requirements of official cemeteries, as regards the regulations on both gravestones and decorations, may be an additional cause for the increase of roadside memorials, states Hartig and Dunne.[9] The same suggestion is made by the researchers of classics, history and religion, Jennifer Clark and Majella Franzmann.[10]Inother words, for somemourners, the cemetery’s standardised and formal places of death may actually hinder the process of grief.[11] Whereas the construction, maintenance, and ritual visits toa more personalised memorial, for instance a roadside memorial, may serve as a way to feel closure on a tragic event.[12]
However, from another perspective, we may well see the construction of spontaneous memorials as just an additional way of expressing the deceased’s identity and social person rather than as an activity counter to caring for agrave lot in the cemetery. In previously mentioned interview study of Swedish roadside memorialisation survivors state that the site where death occurred continues to have importance long after the initial mourning period has passed, where after it often serves as a placeto venerate the deceased on his/her death day.[13]Still, for these survivors this does not mean that the traditional grave lot in the cemetery has lost its function and meaning.On the contrary, in mentioned study, survivors of traffic victims see roadside and domestic memorials as supplementary places of ritual, with slightly different functions than the burial plot in the cemetery.Among these three places of ritual, the roadside memorial seems to be the least important and is in the long run less visited than the burial plot, with an exception for the annual death date. Severalof the survivors rate the cemetery as number one while some rate the domestic memorial, or simply the home at large, as the most important place for remembrance.[14]The reason for this evaluation seems to be the place’s ability to bring about a positive presence of the deceased. While the accident site inevitably is a horrible place, the home is in the same fashion an overly positive place. Supported by photographs and personal objects the home serves as a constant reminder, and daily company, of the deceased’s life. The cemetery seems in this context as rather neutral. Or, as a number of survivors put it, the presence of the deceased can not be felt on the cemetery since this is not where they lived. The presence of the deceased can only be felt at home, or in some other place connected to the deceased life, where the absent person, according to the survivors,still is present.[15]
In line with this, the personal objects placed by an accident site or a burial plot could be seen as a way to link the deceased’s life to the ‘dead’ and impersonal site.Linkages in the opposite direction may also be found as in the practice of bringing things, like splinters of glass or fallen leaves,from the accident site back home.[16]These kinds of practicescould perhaps further be held to facilitate a graspable connection between what the Swedish ethnologist Lynn Åkesson calls the symbolic and diabolic reality, where symbolic reality stands for feelings of unity and meaning of life whereas diabolic reality stands for feelings of disruption and disillusion.[17] By practicallymixing materialsof the symbolic and diabolic reality, life and death, the past and the present, survivors are aided in their struggle towards acceptance. Perhaps also that the act of laying down a material gift helpssurvivorslet go of a bit of their sorrow bytying it to a material thing that theyphysically leave behind.[18]
The personal object - a negative link
Nevertheless, while this practical mixing of the symbolic and diabolic realityisconstructive for some, itfor others constitute a negative experience. For some, an unpredictable encounter with diabolic reality,asin the form ofspontaneous memorials, reveals the ever-present powers of death and turns the space of symbolicreality upside down by exposing its temporariness and fragility.[19] For some people, roadside memorials make the daily drives to and from work ‘almost like going to the cemetery every day’.[20]
However, while you can consciously avoid a visit to the cemetery, or at least prepare yourself for an expected encounter, the unpredicted sight of a roadside memorial may suddenly bring about repressed feelings of pain and anger.[21]According to the psychologist Julia Kristeva, issues that are incomprehensibly and confusingly horrible, from which one never ceases to try separating and therefore constantly remembers, often breaks through and reveals themselvesjust when something contradictory to the expected suddenly appears or when the expected is turned upside down. Exemplified by Kristeva with an episode where the abject of Nazi Crime is represented by material things that for her symbolise life and innocence, in this case dolls and children’s shoes.[22] The theorist Michel de Certeau presents a similar view, stating that the instantaneous flashes of memory can only find catalysts in spaces that enable unpredictable situations to occur, whereas memory becomes static, and eventually withers away, in autonomous proper places.[23]
Between sacred and secular, private and public
Apart from triggering existential questions about life and death spontaneous memorials may also set off struggles between sacred and secular as well as private and public interests.Or, as an article on roadside memorialisation, in the magazine American City & County, declares: ‘In fact, in probably no other area of public life does public practice diverge so dramatically from official policy.’[24]
As an example of the former, Ellen Johnson, president of the American Atheists, sees roadside memorials as a growing problem across the country. ‘We end up with these little Christian shrines everywhere.’ says Johnson.[25]By the same token, the US Oregon Department of Transportation’s removal of roadside crosses was by some Oregonians interpreted as an antireligious act.[26]Although the Oregon Department of Transportation ensures they remove all kinds of unofficial signs since it, according to state highway regulations, is illegal to erect private signs on public roads.[27]
Subsequently, spontaneous memorials, as the ones described in this paper, often trigger a process of formalisation, which is reminiscent of another of Certeau’s discussions, i.e. of how tactics in turn may produce strategies.[28] In this discussion, Certeau uses the terms strategies and tactics as opposites, since strategies are connected to the ruling forces in society, such as for instance economic, political, religious or scientific institutions, whereas tactics belong rather to the common people who do not have the means or status to produce what Certeau calls a proper place of their own. According to Certeau, a proper place emerges when a strategy circumscribes a place as proper, thereby excluding that which is improper. By means of tactics, on the other hand, you can only use, manipulate, or divert, the proper places produced by strategies. You can never own them.In turn, the tactic use of proper places inspires new strategies for reordering and reorganising the tactics produced and so on.[29]
If you think of spontaneous memorials created by the death of a well known person, or where the numbers of deceased is considered ‘reasonably’ high, you may probably all recognise the process I am referring to. Soon enough an official monument, arranged according to a given strategy, is constructed, turning the spontaneous memorial space into a proper public memorial place.
Altar of the Dead
These linkages, contradictions,and conflicts seem to all come together in acultural event, called ‘Altar of the Dead’, encouraging people to contemplate loved onesthat have passed away by leaving gifts, reciting poems, or simply reminiscing, at a confessionless altar placed in an urban park in the city of Malmö.
The altar was arranged the week following Halloween in 2006 and was one of many features during ‘Festival of the Dead’, produced by the cultural association Rárika.[30] Miriam Myrtell, the designer of the altar, wanted it to be confessionless so that people with varying cultural and religious backgrounds would all feel welcome to visit. In order to reach this goal Myrtell designed the altar without characteristics belonging to a specific religion. Consisting of three walls supporting a small roof, decorated with strands of vegetation, the altar appeared a bit like a small shelter. Inside the shelter three long shelves of different height, looking like benches covered in moss, carried flowers, burning candles and incense. In front of the shelves a natural stone from the park, also covered in moss, served as a space for visitors to leave gifts and light candles. In addition to this space the altar also had an adjoining black board wall where visitors were encouraged to leave messages, drawings, and the like with the help of a white pen.
Discussion
The design of the altar could be seen as quite contradictory. With conventional ritual objects, like flowers, candles and incense, the altar is drawn between the tasks of appearing somewhat sacredalthough at the same timeconfessionless. The same can be said of the name of the event, i.e. Altar of the Dead, as well as of the suggestion to leave personal material objects, as sacrificial offers, on an altar-like stone placed in front of the shelter. Nevertheless, just like the cross at a roadside memorial rather functions as a general marker of death and sacredness, than as a symbol of a specific religious faith,[31] the use of conventional ritual objects in the design of the altar contributes to an aura of reverence without addressing aparticular religious group. The offering of personal material objectsis in the same way aided by the impression of worship given by the flat altar-like stone, as well as by the name of the event.
When it comes to the emplacement of the altar,furthercontradictions could be pointed out. The location of the altarin an urban park, next to the public library, in the centre of the city of Malmö, puts forward the altar as a public event. Posters, mail circulars, newspaper announcements and other kinds of formal advertising material,add to this appearance. At the same time the proposed and encouraged grieving practices enacted at the altar, such as the offering of personal gifts, the reminiscing of a loved one that has passed away, could be seen as socially and culturally established as a private business in Sweden. The altars emplacement in the evening park, which at daytime is full of physical leisure activities such aspick-nicks, strolls, and exercises, could perhaps also be seen as a night time counterpart offering mental contemplation and grief work.
As an individual and experimental production,generated in space and time set apart for leisure activities, the Altar of the Dead comes close to the anthropologist Victor Turner’s concept of liminoid phenomena and their spaces.[32] Turner invents the concept of liminoid phenomena in order to secure the meaning of whatever liminal phenomena that are left in post-industrial Western society. Turner further believes that liminoid phenomena resemble, although they are not identical with, primitive liminal phenomena. Instead of ritually and spatially drawing a distinction between profane and sacred work, as liminal phenomena does, liminoid phenomena rather divides between spaces and activities for work, play and leisure. In a similar way the philosopher Michel Foucault discusses certain oppositions ‘nurtured by the hidden presence of the sacred’, which our present day society has not yet dared to break down, such as private space versus public space, family space versus social space, cultural space versus useful space, and ‘between the space of leisure and that of work’.[33]A somewhat more critical view of the relationship between the space of work and play/leisure comes from the sociologist Henri Lefebvre, in speaking of space as being divided up into specialised areas as well as into areas prohibited for this or that group.[34]A critical comment to the placing of the altar, leaning on Lefebvre, could perhaps be that the chosen location, situated in the centre of Malmö, somewhat segregates the visitorsof the altar due to itsdistance from the suburban sprawl, where most of the city’s immigrants are living. Hence, an interesting continuation of the event would be to place an Altar of the Dead in a park that has closer contact with the multicultural side of Malmö. This is also a future aim of the producers of the altar, Alejandra Pizarro and Oyuki Matsumoto.[35]
In any case, the altar was very popular and had visitors of all ages, with varying cultural and religious backgrounds. A few even revisited the altar.Some seemed to go through a transformation, appearing relieved by the leaving of personal gifts, taking the opportunity to talk to and about the deceased. Other visitors were raged by the producers’ suggestion to treat death as a natural part of life, further promotedby theemplacementof the altar in a public park.[36] These two opposite reactionsmay be linked tothe earlier discussion, where for some people a relation between diabolic and symbolic reality is constructive while for others it constitutes a negative experience.Yet, contrary to spontaneous memorials, which are directly connected to a place of death, or a burial place in the cemetery, actuallycontaining a dead body, the Altar of the Deadcould be seen as somewhat disconnected from diabolic reality. On the other hand,the design and decoration of the altar,as well as the word death in its name, do suggest a linkage, whichapparently was obvious enough for mentioned visitors.
Still, I believe there may be other processes at work here,in additionto the ones previously mentioned. The social anthropologist Peter Brown’s interpretation of the religious notion of praesentia, as a social encounter with the presence of the absent,[37] is well worth mentioning in this context.Another important thought, presented by the philosopher Emmanuel Levinas,is that things with ‘a reference to the other’, i.e. places trampled by beings, things held by beings, written as well as spoken language,vestiges and relics, in short all things touched by man, have the capacity to open up for a recognition of the absent other as a mortal human being akin to our self.[38] This ethical and existential recognition of the absent other, enabled by a material thing, could ultimately be seen as a revelation of the presence of infinity.[39] By encountering personal memorial objects,left at the Altar of the Dead,with reference to loved ones that have passed away, visitors becomes engaged in a meeting with the absent other, an act that brings forth the very presence of infinity.For a week in November, for a predestined moment, a public place is arranged as private space, personal material objects function as links to the deceased, and death is connectedtothe infinity of life.