Dorthe Refslund Christensen (Aarhus Universi ty, DK) & Kjeti l Sandvik (Universi ty of Copenhagen, DK)

Keynote at the 2nd Death Online conference, Kingston Universi ty, London, UK, Aug. 17.-18. 2015

HETEROTOPIC

RELATIONS BETWEEN

MEDIA AND MATERIALITY

IN CHILDREN’S ONLINE

MEMORIALS AND ON

CHILDREN’S GRAVES

WORK IN PROGRESS: PLEASE DO NOT QUOTE

WHO ARE WE?

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Kjetil Sandvik : MA and Ph.d. in Dramaturgy and Aesthetics & Culture; associate professor in media studies at Copenhagen University; leader of the master in Crossmedia communication, CU; research leader of the project ‘Meaning Across Media: cross-media communication and co-creation’, funded by the Danish Counci l for Independent Research

Dorthe Refslund Christensen:MA and Ph.d. in Rel igious Studies; associate professor in cultural studies at Aarhus University; leader of the education in Event Culture, AU and research leader of the project Sharing Death

Sharing Death : ethnographic studies of Mindet.dk, various onl ine memorials and chi ldren’s graves at Nordre Kirkegård, Aarhus, DK since 2008: Field studies: observations and photo documentation. We have used the mediatic practices on the graves to understand the onl ine practices and the verbal izations on Mindet.dk to understand the gravepractices.

A variety of theoretical and methodological approaches: anthropology, cultural studies, media studies, r i tual studies etc

Associated to the research project: Death, Material i ty and the Origins of Time (lead by prof. Rane Wil lerslev) 2011 – 2015

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Main publications

Book series: Studies in Death, Materiality and Time

(Ashgate Publishers) (edited by Dorthe Refslund

Christensen & Rane Willerslev):

“Sharing Death: Conceptions of Time at a Danish online

memorial site” (First volume: Taming Time – Timing Death

2013 Christensen & Willerslev eds.))

“Death ends a life – not a relationship: object as media on

children’s grave” (in the second volume Mediating and

Remediating Death, 2014, Christensen & Sandvik eds.)

“Death ends a life, not a relationship: timework and

ritualizations at Mindet.dk” in special issue of The New

Review of Hypermedia and Multimedia (Taylor &

Francis): Online Memorial Culture (Gotved &

Christensen eds.)

A large number of conference papers from 2008-2015

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AGENDA

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In this paper, we analyze how bereaved parents make use of various media-strategies on onl ine memorial si tes and on chi ldren’s graves when performing processes of grief and commemoration for their st i l lborns and infants,

and how these processes are not just l inked to one part icular media but take place across media.

We show how the death of an infant can lead to mediation, remediation and mediatization strategies involving both the uses and arrangement of material objects on memorial pages and on chi ldren’s graves as wel l as uses of new social technologies, that produce, negotiate and develop social relations, belonging and coherence that are both individual and relational and

We claim that this is made possible by r i tual ly establ ishing onl ine memorials and graves as heterotopic interfaces that opens certain communicational f lows and accesses specif ic communicative spaces concerning most prominently the ongoing relations with the dead chi ld and the (re)negotiat ion and (re)mediations of parenthood in a wider social world,

and in that way we regard on- and off l ine memorials as parental strategies in a continuum rather than different in nature. Graves and onl ine memorials are both heterotopia, constructed and used for the same purposes; the strategies involved are simi lar, yet di ffer in detai ls.

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We understand media as a function of an object reflected in human practices and embedded and structured by the different materialit ies they are intertwined with.

We argue that the use of media and materiality online and on the graves are, in various ways, remediations of everyday parental practices, and

We argue that the media logics inherent in these practices goes far beyond the clearcut distinction of online- and offline in that the media logics are present in both spheres, and

we demonstrate how such practices and relations are structured in some basic social matrices of how to perform parenthood, both in relation to the dead child and in relation to achieving social appreciation of the missing child and the role as being parents even when the child has died.

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Previous work:

The grave = interface A point through which agents can interact

Mediates between inhabitants of this and other realms

Implies materiality used as media

Today:

Grave and personal online memorials for stil lborns and infants are interfaces: Where agents interact through the performative handling of material

objects (graves) and through remediations of such objects in visual objects and design (memorials)

Both of which serve as media in the (ongoing) performance and remediation of parenthood:

Grief and bereavement re-approached as the remediated performance of parenthood

HETEROTOPIC INTERFACES

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Heterotopia

Located in reality, however simultaneously, outside all

places

‘capable of juxtaposing in a single, real place several

spaces, several sites that are in themselves incompatible’

(25)

Two kinds:

crisis-heterotopias, that are are ‘priviledged or sacred or forbidden

places, reserved for individuals who are […] in a state of crisis’

(24), or

Heterotopias of deviation, which take over in modern societies

through marginalizing places for individuals with deviant behaviour

Often related to heterochronies , that is ‘slices in time’

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FOUCAULT’S HETEROTOPIA

(FOUCALT 1986)

RITUALIZATIONS

Seligman et al 2008: what ritualizations basically do is to create a subjunctive, an “as if’” or “could -be” universe

this shared subjunctiveness is not restricted to the religious realm but is rather a fundamental way of negotiating our very existence in the world.

We point to ritualization as a performative modus that can both point to certain aspects of life and create modifications, dif ferentiations and demarcations in the socio-cultural world and, at the same time, negotiate the very premises of the social while performing itself within an experimenting and meta-reflexive framework […] depends rather on the experimentation with meaning itself and the idea of the possibility of there being any meaning after the event of the child’s death (Christensen & Sandvik 2013: 106)

MEDIA AS FUNCTION

’We use the concept of media in a rather inclusive way, in that it encompasses both what we generally conceive of as media (phones, radio, television, internet) as well as objects or materialities that are turned into media (achieve media status) through human practice ’

’Thus, media are a function of an object reflected in human practices and embedded and structured by the different materialities they are intertwined with’ (Christensen and Sandvik, 2014)

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3 LEVELS OF ANALYSIS

First level concerns the ’how’ of the communicational practices we observe: in what ways are the objects found on chi ldren’s graves being put to use and in what ways can these be conceptual ized as media uses?

Media as conduits, language and environment (Meyrowitz)

Second level concerns the ’who’ of the communicational practices:

who is communicating to/with whom

who are the senders and receivers in the communicational flows that take place on the graves?

Communication as allocution, consultation, registration, conversation (Bordewijk & Kaam)

Third level concerns the ’why’ of the communicational practices at play:

what are the meaning-making purposes of these acts of communication found on children’s graves?

Communication as ritual (Carey)

Ritual as subjunctive space for negotiation of social matrices and relations (Seligman et al)

WHAT DO PARENTS DO ON THE GRAVES

Placing and re-placing objects on the grave

Prototypical child- and childhood objects: 2 basic matrices

The grave as sandbox/playground (objects played with)

The grave as nursery (objects on display)

Seasonal ornaments and interior design objects: relating the child to the social world and to red letter days in the family

Meta reflective objects (laminated books, poems, drawings etc)

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MEDIA AS ENVIRONMENT ON THE

GRAVES

The nursery:

A place of comfort and safety

A place where the child gets tucked in, has bedtime stories

read and finally falls to sleep

The mediatic objects found are dolls, teddy bears nicely

arranged as if they were displayed on shelves or in the

child’s bed, mobiles in bright and happy colors with

emblematic objects such as flowers, bumblebees and stars

hanging from them

chairs and benches in which to sit and read stories to the

child and watch over it.

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MEDIA AS ENVIRONMENT ON THE GRAVES

The sandbox:

A designated place for children’s play

Objects found: toy cars, trains, planes, plastic animals

(cows, horses, dinosaurs)

The sandbox-feel is fueled by these objects often being

moved around, rearranged and replaced in a messy and

random fashion, as if they are actually being played with

(e.g. by younger siblings)

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MEDIA AS ENVIRONMENT

As mediating environments ’the grave as nursery’ and ’the

grave as sandbox’ communicate a specific ongoing and

evolving narrative of parenthood establishing a specific

subjunctive: how things could have been if the child had not

died.

A life affirming strategy for facing a future that includes the

continuous presence of the dead child, co-existing with,

e.g., the appearance of new siblings, being related to family

events like holiday travels and so on

Nursery: ’we have a child we wish we could care for ’

Sandbox: ’we have a child (or older brother/sister) we wish

we could play with’

MEDIA AS LANGUAGE ON THE GRAVES

• The mediating environments frame a specific vocabulary, a

specific media language constituted by the use of specific

objects as media on the graves each of which has its own

vocabulary and mediatic qualities:

• Examples of this are:

• angel figurines, angel pictures, small iconic pictures etc (the

child being referred to as an angel residing somewhere external,

having an afterlife

• Toys of all sorts (the child as alive and as a child and

playmate/material aspects of being parents

• Seasonal decorations such as Christmas ornaments, easter

bunnies, harvests of fall (the child as part of a social and

biological world and as part of a family

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MEDIA AS CONDUITS

Media as conduits depicts media as content transporters or transmitters by being delivers of specif ic content

Can be said about most objects on the graves: they carry specific content adding to the communicational practices at play: the encounters with the loss, with grief, displaying messages of presence, of being close and being thought of and remembered, however:

Some objects are more explicit and serve more explicit ly as conduits: ’Smilla’s stone’ is at one and the same time an example of objects as

media-as-language and objects as media-as-conduits

Laminated drawings and handprints from siblings, stonecarved messages from siblings etc

Villads’ stone (making Villads a present agent)

Albert’s windmill (through which Albert’s mother Camilla imagines him answering her silent thoughts)

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Creation of individual memorial site

personalized use of the design tools at hand : background

texture, imagery and colors, use of text, pictures, drawings,

small animated fi lms or imagery like candles with moving flames

and so on.

Maintaining individual memorial site:

texts and pictures ‘setting the scene’ (texts, pictures about

the dead, siblings, family,the pregnancy, the dying proces, the

funeral, the grave (always refered to as the child’s ‘garden’ etc.)

diary-like entries (mostly texts (prose, poems, song lyrics)

often directly addressing the dead child (continued life with the

loss and grief AND with the dead child as an absent yet present

agent: creation of story, of memories)

Lighting candles : from everyday to frequently to red letters days

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WHAT DO PARENTS DO ON MINDET.DK

Matrices:

• The nursery (design elements like teddybears; the use of childrens colors (pink for girls, blue for boys)

• The family photo album (documentation of the child and its short existence; photographs of siblings, grandparents, parents holding the baby)

• Maternity group (appreciating greetings from peers and relatives

• Childrens ’ book (drawings (of the child); haircuts; finger - and footprints; narratives of pregnancy and giving birth; stories of the child’s spirit and whereabouts (has it l ived))

• Diary (confident writ ings to the child and reflections on it; long accounts of the pregnancy and “where it went wrong” – especially in the “light a candle section ”

• Sandbox: because of the lack of physical materiality here, the sandbox is re-mediated from the pictures of toys on the grave or thorugh the pictures of playing siblings

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MEDIA AS ENVIRONMENT, LANGUAGE AND

CONDUITS AT MINDET.DK

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Content: a grandmother addressing her dead grandson, telling about everyday activities,

but at the same time addressing the child’s existence, expressing hopes that he is cele

brating his dead grandfather together with him and informing how the birthday is held

in the family by decorating both the grandfather’s and the child’s graves

Approaching on- and off l ine practices in this way, we point to the various strategies of bereaved parents that are often performing their griefwork in various spatial sett ings

And al l off which might be analyzed as certain aspects of one big continuum of griefwork characterized both by being material and mediatic

while the Death Onl ine focus is so important and so easy to argue in favour of, many death related practices are actual ly the onl ine part of a larger picture counting both on- and off l ine practices and being related to socio-cultural practices in al l kinds of sett ings and contexts.

what mediatized and remediated and remediating heterotopia contr ibute to is the qual i ty of the grief not taking over al l l i fe spheres because a r i tual ized heteretopia is not a place one can inhabit 24 -7.

The heterotopic qual i t ies of these r i tual ized media strategies makes social demarcations - and scaffolds the process of staying al ive. The login and logout mode –whether l i teral ly, physical ly or both – maintain the dist inction between realms – and even though faci l i tat ing the keeping hold of the chi ld when logging in, i t might also just faci l i tate the temporary lett ing go…when logging out

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CLOSING REMARKS