Place
The most common burial site featured in this project is the cemetery. A cemetery is an area of ground where dead bodies are buried. Besides this defining factor, these spaces vary widely in their function, architecture, and types of interment. Some cemeteries are private, owned by families or religious groups. Others are public and funded by the government or independent businesses. In both, the locations of the bodies are often marked with stones, plaques, mausoleums, or other monuments. Sometimes these markers are removed intentionally over time, or the bodies are never marked. The cemetery is an enclosed territory. Occasionally there is a wall built up around its edges and there are borders visitors must cross. Other times, it is not so simple and there are burials located beyond the drawn lines. The cemetery also exists as a space of memory, which floats beyond its physical boundaries. It is a site often imagined to be permanent but is truthfully impermanent. Any monuments, along with the buried bodies, continually decay.
I imagine the cemetery as a metaphor for a collective body: alive, breathing and ever evolving. This body absorbs the literal human bodies buried in the site, and the histories that follow them. In the field of folklore, places are spectators to what later become stories. They collect these memories with them as generations come and go. When I enter this territory, I am eager to discover what these places might tell me. My senses are enveloped by all its details, and my perception of time and space is transformed. I become a part of the slippery boundaries of this body and learn from the rich narratives embodied within these landscapes. Bodies intersect metaphorically and physically in the space of the cemetery.
The idea that the earth is a woven universe of connected beings containing many forms of knowledge is ancient. A planet, as a place, is a living and breathing organism, too. Indigenous scientist and poet Robin Wall Kimmerer writes about how generations of Indigenous people have long relied on sensorial ways of knowing and have understood that our lives carry a reciprocal relationship with all elements of our surroundings. She writes, “What happens to one happens to all. We can starve together or feast together. All flourishing is mutual.” As a botanist, this ideology has radically changed the way she studies the interconnected relationships occurring within the ecology of the forest. There are many invisible lifeforms in the cemetery that thrive because of the human bodies decaying.
Similarly, Tim Ingold’s writing on temporality discusses landscape as an embodied meshwork that is perpetually under construction. He explains how places are zones of entanglement, where things flow in and out, inhaling and exhaling. The cemetery is in constant flux. Finally, to reference political theorist Jane Bennett who thinks critically about the affect and agency of materiality, we are surrounded by vibrant matter. The markers and architectural elements within the cemetery adopt a form of animacy over time, becoming new bodies that we visit in the place of those who are gone. These ways of thinking decenter the human’s position within the scheme of life and death.
The most common burial site featured in this project is the cemetery. A cemetery is an area of ground where dead bodies are buried. Besides this defining factor, these spaces vary widely in their function, architecture, and types of interment. Some cemeteries are private, owned by families or religious groups. Others are public and funded by the government or independent businesses. In both, the locations of the bodies are often marked with stones, plaques, mausoleums, or other monuments. Sometimes these markers are removed intentionally over time, or the bodies are never marked. The cemetery is an enclosed territory. Occasionally there is a wall built up around its edges and there are borders visitors must cross. Other times, it is not so simple and there are burials located beyond the drawn lines. The cemetery also exists as a space of memory, which floats beyond its physical boundaries. It is a site often imagined to be permanent but is truthfully impermanent. Any monuments, along with the buried bodies, continually decay.
I imagine the cemetery as a metaphor for a collective body: alive, breathing and ever evolving. This body absorbs the literal human bodies buried in the site, and the histories that follow them. In the field of folklore, places are spectators to what later become stories. They collect these memories with them as generations come and go. When I enter this territory, I am eager to discover what these places might tell me. My senses are enveloped by all its details, and my perception of time and space is transformed. I become a part of the slippery boundaries of this body and learn from the rich narratives embodied within these landscapes. Bodies intersect metaphorically and physically in the space of the cemetery.
The idea that the earth is a woven universe of connected beings containing many forms of knowledge is ancient. A planet, as a place, is a living and breathing organism, too. Indigenous scientist and poet Robin Wall Kimmerer writes about how generations of Indigenous people have long relied on sensorial ways of knowing and have understood that our lives carry a reciprocal relationship with all elements of our surroundings. She writes, “What happens to one happens to all. We can starve together or feast together. All flourishing is mutual.” As a botanist, this ideology has radically changed the way she studies the interconnected relationships occurring within the ecology of the forest. There are many invisible lifeforms in the cemetery that thrive because of the human bodies decaying.
Similarly, Tim Ingold’s writing on temporality discusses landscape as an embodied meshwork that is perpetually under construction. He explains how places are zones of entanglement, where things flow in and out, inhaling and exhaling. The cemetery is in constant flux. Finally, to reference political theorist Jane Bennett who thinks critically about the affect and agency of materiality, we are surrounded by vibrant matter. The markers and architectural elements within the cemetery adopt a form of animacy over time, becoming new bodies that we visit in the place of those who are gone. These ways of thinking decenter the human’s position within the scheme of life and death.
Kimmerer, Robin Wall. Braiding Sweetgrass: Indigenous Wisdom, Scientific Knowledge and the Teachings of Plants. United States: Milkweed Editions, 2013. 15.
Ingold, Tim. The Perception of the Environment: Essays on Livelihood, Dwelling and Skill. United Kingdom: Routledge, 2000.
Bennett, Jane. Vibrant Matter: A Political Ecology of Things. United Kingdom: Duke University Press, 2010.