Digital shrinesDigital shrines or digital memory objects are developed for vernacular, artistic or activist memorialization or remembering of missing persons and connecting mourners across long distances. They include analogous and digitally born images, verses from the literature or religious texts, personal notes and thoughts, videos and video collages that circulating online. They are „intended to comfort friends and family in dealing... More or digital memory objectsDigital memory objects or digital shrines have the function of archiving, documenting, sharing, mourning and grieving. They rematerialize and initiate commemorative practices and have the ability to create and maintain social, human relationships, bring people together, etc. „In contexts in which refugees are on the move and families are dispersed over different continents, digitalized photographs are memorial objects that can... More are developed for vernacular, artistic or activist memorialization or remembering of missing persons and connecting mourners across long distances. They include analogous and digitally born images, verses from the literature or religious texts, personal notes and thoughts, videos and video collages that circulating online. They are „intended to comfort friends and family in dealing with the impossibility of whispering farewells to missing persons. Yet many of these shrines are accessible around the world and thus become visited by a wider audience that is not related to the dead. Digital shrinesDigital shrines or digital memory objects are developed for vernacular, artistic or activist memorialization or remembering of missing persons and connecting mourners across long distances. They include analogous and digitally born images, verses from the literature or religious texts, personal notes and thoughts, videos and video collages that circulating online. They are „intended to comfort friends and family in dealing... More act as a proxy for the unknown location where a missing and missed person is, whether or not she is dead or alive. But assuming that many family members will experience moments where someone’s deathDeath is physical, biological and social phenomena. Death as social phenomena remains present in society and is handled symbolically after life is over. ... More is acknowledged, these online or digital shrinesDigital shrines or digital memory objects are developed for vernacular, artistic or activist memorialization or remembering of missing persons and connecting mourners across long distances. They include analogous and digitally born images, verses from the literature or religious texts, personal notes and thoughts, videos and video collages that circulating online. They are „intended to comfort friends and family in dealing... More become ‘mobile sepulchres’ (Petrović-Šteger 2012). A mobile sepulchre instantiates an implosion of boundaries between public and private, local and global, and planned and spontaneous memorialization and commemoration. Digitally mediated routes to memorializing and commemorating those who are ‘lost’ (i.e. someone who cannot yet be dead), fundamentally transform cultures of remembering, commemorating, re-enacting and, therewith, also mourning those who are missing and are missed“ (Mirto et al. 2020: 110).
Literature:
Mirto, Giorgia, Simon Robins, Karina Horsti, Pamela J. Prickett, Deborah Ruiz Verduzco and Victor Toom. 2020. „Mourning Missing Migrants. Ambiguous LossAmbiguous loss is the incomplete or uncertain loss experienced as the ambiguity of waiting and wondering, recognised in arts, literature, opera, theatre, but widely ignored in the clinical literature (Boss 2000: 4-5). Pauline Boss, who introduced the term, differentiates between „two basic kinds of ambiguous loss. In the first type, people are perceived by family members as physically absent but... More and the Grief Strangers.“ In Border Deaths. Causes, Dynamics and Consequences of Migration-related Mortality. Paolo Cuttitta and Tamara Last eds. Amsterdam: Amsterdam University Press, 103-116.