Not just a toothbrush: meaning making in informal commemorative practices

The memorial is an object which reflects and represents people as part of a society or as individuals in a certain time in history. In many ways my interest in these objects is as that of a cultural scientist: investigating the particular socio-material phenomena of memorialising in a petri dish of human culture. This research focusses on informal commemorative practices, derives from their distinctive but diverse visual and contextual characteristics in an attempt to understand people's needs and practices in this realm. It explores the informal, the spontaneous, and the individual memorial such as road side memorials, ghost bikes, and spontaneous shrines, rather than the permanent and monumental.

This is a project-based research consisting of the design, planning and execution of a set of proposed projects to explore possible forms and methods of informal memorial design. These take in consideration and respond to different variants: local needs, limitations and possibilities which are encountered along the way.

The exploration of the memorial realm is set to provide a better understanding of the role of the creative practice vis-à-vis the varied "clients" of these objects, i.e. the mourners, the stakeholders, government agencies and of course, the general public.