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{"id":174980,"date":"2009-09-01T19:20:00","date_gmt":"2009-09-02T00:20:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/esse.ca\/monuments-commemoratifs-immediats-la-celebration-implicite-du-deuil-communautaire\/"},"modified":"2023-05-05T19:16:10","modified_gmt":"2023-05-06T00:16:10","slug":"immediate-memorials-the-implicit-celebration-of-communal-mourning","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/staging.esse.ca\/en\/immediate-memorials-the-implicit-celebration-of-communal-mourning\/","title":{"rendered":"Immediate Memorials: The Implicit Celebration of Communal Mourning"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
At first glance they resemble a celebration: large crowds bringing an array of objects, clustering together and exchanging words, thoughts, \u00adfeelings. Widespread and regularly reported, this familiar gathering is a contemporary mourning ritual at sites of sudden death that is expressed in aggregates of flowers, candles, crosses, stuffed animals, photographs of the deceased and personal notes and cards. Variously described as spontaneous or makeshift memorials1<\/sup><\/a><\/span> 1 <\/a> - I discuss a different aspect of immediate memorials in Harriet F. Senie, \u201cMourning in Protest: Spontaneous Memorials and the Sacralization of Public Space,\u201d in Jack Santino, ed., Spontaneous Shrines and the Public Memorialization of Death<\/em> (New York: Palgrave MacMillan, 2006), 41\u201349.<\/span> or shrines, these assemblages reflect a social need to find solace in a shared experience of shock, grief and perhaps anger. As close to the site of sudden death as possible, implicitly they celebrate community in the midst of the chaos of loss\u2014of local victims of roadside accidents or drive-by shootings; of celebrities suddenly gone; or of the larger numbers lost in more public deaths
like 9\/11.<\/pre>\n\n\n\n
Since this practice is predictable, it can no longer be called spontaneous. Rather, its salient characteristic is immediacy. Sudden public deaths rend the social fabric in shocking, tragic ways. They shatter the illusion of safety, destroying expectations of continuity and prompting a pervasive impulse to do something. Describing the array of objects that people leave to mark the place of death as makeshift belittles the poignancy of \u00adindividual contributions as well as the visual and emotional power of the whole. Rarely, if ever, discussed in the context of art, immediate \u00admemorials reflect inspirations shared by many artists and offer a visual vocabulary appropriated by some in their installations.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Celebrity Mourning: Princess Di<\/h2>\n\n\n\n
Be they stars of the entertainment industry, noted politicians, athletes and the like, celebrities embody individual fantasies and cultural myths. They serve as time markers incorporated into personal histories as people relate significant dates in their lives to publicized events in the life and death of the famous. Feelings about celebrities are of a complex nature;2<\/sup><\/a><\/span> 2 <\/a> - <\/p>\n\n\n\n
Zoe Sofoulis, \u201cIcon, Referent, Trajectory, World,\u201d in Ien Ang, Ruth Barcan, et al., Planet Diana: Cultural Studies and Global Mourning<\/em> (Kingswood, Australia: University of Western Sydney, Nepean, 1997), 13. Sofoulis observes that \u201cfigures like Diana are more than mere images . . . they are diagrams on which people map their own lives and which they put to work in narrativising [sic] or fantasizing about their own histories. . . .\u201d She concludes that \u201cdistinctions between mediated and actual emotions break down the closer one examines the psychology of emotions and \u00adidentifications. The feelings about Diana\u2019s death, like feelings generally, were both mediated and<\/em> real.\u201d<\/span> their basis may be suspect but the experience nonetheless feels authentic to many. Celebrities serve as powerful social connectors. By definition they are celebrated and when they die, especially if that death is sudden and unexpected, communal grieving ensues. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
When Diana, Princess of Wales, died in a car crash on 30 August 1997 at the age of thirty-six, she was the most famous and most \u00adphotographed woman in the world.3<\/sup><\/a><\/span> 3 <\/a> - Tony Walter, ed., The Mourning for Diana <\/em>(New York: Oxford, 1999), 40. <\/span> The scale of the subsequent \u00adpublic response was unprecedented. People, by both bearing witness and \u00admaking individual observations, became participants in and commentators on an historical event that felt personal to them. While the floral tributes were generic and assumed a communal aspect (comparable to the American flags post-9\/11), the written words, once signed, were unique.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The Place d\u2019Alma, the public space closest to the spot where the Princess died, was already identified by a \u00adreplica of the torch held by the Statue of Liberty, a gift to the French people from the International Herald Tribune <\/em>on its centenary in 1987. This intended symbol of French-American \u00adfriendship was \u00adappropriated by the public as the focal point of an \u00adinternational tribute to Diana.4<\/sup><\/a><\/span> 4 <\/a> -  See Craig R. Whitney, \u201cParis Adds a Garden to Diana\u2019s Thriving Memorials,\u201d New York Times<\/em>, 30 August 1998. People were still visiting and leaving flowers and notes at the Place d\u2019Alma in June 2009 when I last visited the site.<\/span> The artist Thomas Hirschhorn, discussed below, was attracted to the way the public appropriated this official memorial and cited it as an inspiration for his monuments. Notes in French, English, Spanish, Arabic, Russian and other languages clustered around the base of the sculpture and \u00admessages were inscribed on top of the low barrier walls above the \u00adsunken highway. Most addressed Diana directly. A combination community \u00adbulletin board and autograph book, the Place d\u2019Alma for years served as a site of \u00adcommunal remembrance, a validation and celebration of Princess Di and her public.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
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Amalia Mesa-Bains, Altar for Santa Teresa de Avila<\/em> [Renunciation and Denial], 
De Sassait Museum, Santa Clara, 1984.
Amalia Mesa-Bains, Altar for Santa Teresa de Avila<\/em> (d\u00e9tail de la niche | nicho box detail), 1984.
photos\u202f: permission de l’artiste | courtesy of the artist<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n\n\n\n
\n
\"\"<\/figure>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n\n\n\n
Mass Murders: Immediate Memorials after 9\/11 <\/h2>\n\n\n\n
As New York City below 14th Street was closed off after the 9\/11 \u00adbombings, many people gathered at Union Square, the closest open public space to Ground Zero, and created a large, interactive immediate memorial.5<\/sup><\/a><\/span> 5 <\/a> - A more detailed analysis of this phenomenon appears in the author\u2019s \u201cDifference in Kind: Spontaneous Memorials after 9\/11,\u201d Sculpture<\/em>, web special issue, http:\/\/www.sculpture.org\/documents\/scmag03\/jul_aug03\/webspecial\/senie.shtml; reprinted in Area (Spring 2003): 56\u201359.<\/span> Smaller versions sprung up throughout the city, especially at places where the suddenly dead had once lived. But on 11 September 2001 there was one profound difference in the nature of these sudden deaths that, for a time, changed the nature of the practice. When people gathered initially and in the days that followed, the number and identity of the casualties were unknown.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Since the missing initially were hoped to be just that, there were few personal relics or gifts, no obvious objects of shared experience, only the photographs of the missing, usually prefaced with a heart-breaking query, have you seen . . . ?<\/em> But evidence of commentary was everywhere, \u00adtransforming the site in part into a communal gathering place for \u00adpolitical statement, an echo of the role Union Square once played in the city\u2019s \u00adhistory. American flags, which soon became ubiquitous throughout the city, appeared draped in front of the statue of George Washington and in his hand. The Henry Kirke Brown sculpture, the second equestrian \u00admonument to be cast in the United States and the city\u2019s first outdoor bronze \u00adsculpture (dedicated on 4 July 1856), functioned on 9\/11 as the symbolic locus of political commentary. Washington\u2019s boots were coloured pink and a blue peace symbol was taped onto his outstretched hand. His horse was \u00adcovered with anti-war graffiti, and notably with a prominent peace symbol on his rear flank. The statue\u2019s base was filled with \u00adcomments of love and peace. Altogether it conveyed a decidedly mixed but somehow reassuring message.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The crowds that gathered around the clock at Union Square appeared intent on creating a communal space, thereby providing comfort in numbers in the most uncertain and frightening of times. Early on, the Department of Parks in consultation with the city\u2019s Art Commission \u00addecided to remove the graffiti from the George Washington statue and restore Union Square to its pre-9\/11 state. This process of desacralization exemplifies what Kenneth E. Foote calls, in Shadowed Ground: America\u2019s Landscapes of Violence and Tragedy<\/em>, \u201cthe rectification of a site,\u201d which implies that no lasting positive or negative meaning will be associated with it. Other \u00adcategories for the treatment of such sites are \u00adsanctification, \u00addesignation and obliteration. And while there are no remaining \u00advisible signs, the transformation of Union Square in the wake of 9\/11 and the weeks that followed are an indelible part of personal memory. Undoubtedly, it will \u00adfigure in subsequent written histories of the event and of the site. Described as an outdoor memorial to loss and grief,6<\/sup><\/a><\/span> 6 <\/a> - Andrew Jacobs, \u201cPeace Amid Calls for War,\u201d New York Times, 20 September 2001, A20.<\/span> the immediate memorial at Union Square was able to accommodate opposing political views about the appropriate response to the terrorist attacks. New York Times<\/em> art critic Michael Kimmelman saw it as \u201ca true modern war memorial . . . a strange blend of patriotic flag-waving and Vietnam-era protest.\u201d7<\/sup><\/a><\/span> 7 <\/a> - Michael Kimmelman, \u201cOffering Beauty, and Then Proof That Life Goes On,\u201d New York Times, 30 December 2001, AR 35.<\/span> In this melange of diverse opinions and forms of expression, there was, it seemed, room for all and everything.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
 The Aesthetic Language of Immediate Memorials<\/h2>\n\n\n\n
Although they have been denigrated in the press as makeshift and \u00adconfined to discussions of folk or vernacular art, immediate \u00admemorials themselves or their aesthetic elements have prompted various \u00adartists working in different media to respond to their authenticity. Photographers have long been attracted to roadside and other \u00adimmediate memorials. Some installation artists, inspired by their ethnic heritage, have created art from the same sources that are evidenced in \u00adimmediate memorials. Others have appropriated their formal vocabulary for \u00adtheoretical ends. Indeed, immediate memorials exhibit many \u00adcharacteristics that are consistent with contemporary art concerns. They are fragmented, non-hierarchical, collaborative efforts and, as such, a \u00adgenuinely democratic form of (public) art.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Immediate memorials typically reflect the mourning customs of \u00addifferent ethnic groups. Hispanic, African, Caribbean and other cultural heritages also inspired artists to create works that incorporate similar forms and images. Amalia Mesa-Bains (born 1943 in Santa Clara, California) was among the first and most consistent artists to use her Chicano \u00ad<\/sup>heritage in this way. In creating her personal altars to Dolores del Rio, Frida Kahlo and her grandmother she followed traditional Mexican \u00adaltar-making practices, making her own paper cut-outs and flowers, and screening her own altar cloths. She considers these works \u201cceremonial centers\u201d that enable her \u201cto reach a spiritual sensibility through aesthetic form.\u201d8<\/sup><\/a><\/span> 8 <\/a> - Amalia Mesa-Bains as quoted in Linda Weintraub, Art on the Edge and Over <\/em>(Litchfield, CT: Art Insights, 1996), 95.<\/span><\/p>\n\n\n\n
In the 1989 catalogue accompanying the exhibition Contemporary Hispanic Shrines<\/em> David Rubin defines the artist\u2019s mission as \u00aduniversalizing the altar by transforming it from church-related structure into generic vessel for spiritual expression and thus able to engage an audience regardless of their religious beliefs.9<\/sup><\/a><\/span> 9 <\/a> - David Rubin, Contemporary Hispanic Shrines<\/em> (Reading, PA: Freedman Gallery, Albright College, 1989), n.p.<\/span> This is precisely how \u00adculturally \u00adspecific expressions of mourning are experienced in immediate \u00admemorials. Secularized by their public presentation, they apparently engage a wide general audience. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
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Thomas Hirschhorn, Mondrian Altar<\/em>, Gen\u00e8ve, 1997. \u00a9 Thomas Hirschhorn \/ sodrac (2009)
Amalia Mesa-Bains, Frida Kahlo Altar <\/em>(d\u00e9tail | detail), Galeria de la Raza, 1978.
photo\u202f: permission | courtesy Galerie Chantal Crousel, Paris<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n
More than any other contemporary artist, Thomas Hirschhorn (born 1957 in Bern, Switzerland) has appropriated the visual language of \u00adimmediate memorials. He created what he calls altars for artists Piet Mondrian and Otto Freundlich and writers Ingeborg Bachmann and Raymond Carver. He chose his subjects because \u201cthey have all tried to change the world. They have all led lives and produced work that inspires admiration, not in terms of success or failure, but through the \u00adpertinence of their inquiry.\u201d10<\/sup><\/a><\/span> 10 <\/a> - James Rondeau, Thomas Hirschhorn: Jumbo Spoons and Big Cake; Flugplatz Welt\/World Airport<\/em> (Chicago: The Art Institute of Chicago, 2000), 30.<\/span> His (formal) inspiration is immediate memorials (called variously spontaneous shrines or altars, or makeshift \u00admonuments), \u201c\u00adfamiliar from the deaths of celebrities (Lady Di, Gianni Versace, Olaf Palme, Fran\u00e7ois Mitterand), but also of the unknown, such as young people who have committed suicide, car-accident fatalities, or victims of crime.\u201d11<\/sup><\/a><\/span> 11 <\/a> - Hirschhorn: Altar to Raymond Carver, 7\u201326 March 2000<\/em> (Philadelphia: Godie Paley Gallery, Moore College of Art), 2.<\/span> He sees his altars as similar personal commitments, as \u00adexpressions of love that reflect the importance of bearing witness. Composed of candles, flowers, stuffed toys, photographs and notes, Hirschhorn\u2019s unlabeled temporary interventions, which typically last approximately two weeks, could easily be mistaken for immediate memorials. Indeed, the public is free to add or to take things away. For Hirschhorn, these altars question the contemporary status of monuments by virtue of their form, location (which might be anywhere, since people may die anywhere) and duration.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Both Mesa-Bains and Hirschhorn meld the personal and the \u00adpolitical, as do participants in immediate memorials. This contemporary public mourning ritual manifests the potential of democratic public life as it was once experienced or at least imagined. An authentic expression of emotion and public engagement, often lamented as lacking in \u00adcontemporary art, it has served as a thus far unrecognized attraction to artists. Immediate memorials reflect the power of the public to fashion their own meaningful rituals; this is their underlying celebratory element.<\/p>\n
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