VELORITO or: "Altar for the Piece of Art that did not Make it"
SÜDFRIEDHOF, Munich, Germany, 2006
Early in April 2006 I am visiting Südfridhof in Munich, Germany, looking for "signs of human mourning". The German graves look very sober... and anyway the Südfridhof is a historic cemetery and closed for burial since many years.
VELORITO is the minimization of the Spanish word "velorio" which means "event, amusement in the evening" however also "burial". A VELORITO is consequently a "little ritual of grieving".
Some Basic Thoughts · Installation & Happening · Parallels · Aims and Results · Possible Objects of Mourning · Outlook
Some Basic Thoughts
What does keep people apart? The fear of loss - and: the denying of loss
and sorrow. If ever experienced, many people tend to deny loss and consequently
do not mourn it neither. They assume that as a result of this attitude
they will become immune to further losses (although deeply inside they
are aware that this never works out). What are the alternatives? To acknowledge
loss as a real possibility - which however must not automatically take
place.
I believe that if one denies something (such as loss) in some way, it tends
to forcefully come into existence.
Installation & Happening
OSTFRIEDHOF, Munich, Germany, 2006
VELORITO is a spontaneous happening, a short-termed arranged meeting of people in the public space to jointly express sorrow over loss and/or failure.
Place: unpretentious, downtown; places which invite
people to pass by casually: p. ex. on a sidewalk; in no case: places that
immediately invoke the aura of "art"
Dimension: site-specific, variably
Object: context-specific, variably (see "protagonists" and "possible
object of mourning")
Material: cloth, candles as used on graves, images
or symbols representing the object of mourning, flowers; in short:
everything that classically can be found on a cemetery or grave;
personal statements regarding the object of mourning
Protagonists: people who experienced comparable
losses or failures and therefore have a common object of mourning
Interaction: with pedestrians; symbolic expansion from the specific object
of mourning towards the activity of mourning in general: mourning as an activity
that brings people together.
Time frame: happening; time for interaction between protagonists
and pedestrians; after that the installation can simply be left intact
in order to remind for yet some time of the event
Parallels - Human Mourning in Public Space
9-11 Altars
OSTFRIEDHOF, Munich, Germany, 2006
Some time later I visit Ostfriedhof. I want to see dried flowers, this morbid relicts of sorrow. Roses. Roses are best. Many people are there, beautifying graves of theirs passed away relatives, Easter is near. The general atmosphere is neutral. Very pretty weather. All those people act as if they were going to work... strange.
When I am almost on my way out I finally find exactly what I had sought for: a very un-German, very touching and personal grave. I take a child died, on the gravestone however only the data of an adult. A child. Somewhere a photo of the ocean. Soft toys.
Shortly after the events of September 11, 2001 little "altars" appeared spontaneously at different locations all over New York City. They were a public expression of mourning, recalling memories of friends or relatives that were missed in the events. At the same time these altars often were an manifestation of sympathy: persons who had not lost anybody could relate or even interact. Examples:
This model of public mourning is very unusual for my cultural context (Germany). Here mourning takes place almost exclusively on the cemetery, and also there only in very strict and regimented ways. Hardly ever feelings of mourning are shown, to the contrary, it is often explicitly requested to avoid "Beileidsbekundungen" (expressions of sorrow and sympathy).
In the Caribbean I once experienced an entirely different burial. Partially I found its loud and vehement expression of pain very shocking. But maybe the way things are done over here, just burying everything inside oneself, is just worse.
"Marterl"
" Marterl" is a slightly different German phenomenon, locally restricted to Bavaria. They are small installations made in remembrance of relatives that lost their lives through accident or misfortune. The place of the misfortune becomes the place of mourning and remembering and the passerby is invited to share the loss. Examples:
Thomas Hirschhorn
Thomas Hirschhorn repeatedly constructed "newsstands" or "altars" for those artists who deeply influenced him and his work. These installations are documented in detail, p. ex.
Thomas Hirschhorn's installations however mainly address the issue of remembrance, and are less an expression of mourning.
Aims & Results
VELORITO: Public Mourning as an Element of Connection - Enrichment - Liberation
Connection
OSTFRIEDHOF, Munich, Germany, 2006
VELORITO serves as ritual that builds community and solidarity by publicly and jointly showing sorrow, pain and failure and thus feel connected with others: who is ever free of loss or failure?
Sharing & Enrichment
Today for most people the idea of sharing invokes that I give away something
of the things I own. And as everybody only hold money and success, the
action of sharing is connected with the experience of material impoverishment.
If one admitted that also loss and failure are part of the human experience
and thus also included in the idea of sharing, sharing everything would thus
alleviate one's burden as the weight of melancholy, pain or feelings of failure
would become distributed over many shoulders. Joint mourning consequently
frees and brings the individual at ease, for we can let go of pain.
Maybe the sharing of pain and sorrow is intriguedly connected to the sharing
of prosperity: if someone is unable to do one thing, maybe also the other
one cannot happen?
Liberation
OSTFRIEDHOF, Munich, Germany, 2006
Expressing and admitting those things that we usually hide and suppress
liberates blocked parts of our personal power. If we mourn something publicly
we subsequently can release it, and only then the wound can heal.
Many people are caught for decades in a sorrow they buried within themselves.
P. ex. there has never been real possibility for soldiers to express the"
psychic pain they took home from war.
Pain and sorrow that are suppressed in this way notably disturb normal human
sensibility, people become "different", and whenever one asks the
only answer is silence. That is a very sad situation.
Possible Objects of Mourning
There are no limits to possible objects of mourning. There are really tough ones (see above, psychic pain from warfare), but maybe it is a good idea to start out light-heartedly with funny ones:
"Pieces of Art that did not make it"
Almost every artist knows them: those works regarded as unsuccessful,
leaning against the studio wall and occasionally even considered for destruction.
Usually they survive and at some point gain a certain relevance regarding
the entire body of work, although strictly speaking they are fiascos. As
times goes by a subtle solidarity develops, for they have been there for
so long.
"Pieces of Art that did not make it" represent one component of the
entire body of work of an artist, just the way sorrow is just one component of
the general emotional outlook of a person, however not the only one. The point
is not to present oneself as an unsuccessful artist, but rather to say something
like: "Hey, everything works fine for me and I am satisfied - however even
with me some artworks did not work out." Failure is something very human
- and therefore such a wonderfully element of interconnection.
...or: "Love stories that did not work out"
How about an alternative object of mourning, a round of VELORITO for
all those lovers, with whom it did not work out? Oh yes, perhaps one should
take a closer look at that tight, sad feeling of "not being loved" (which
is always a very subjective issue). Usually one keeps it to oneself - so
perhaps it would be very freeing to observe it jointly!
With an altar full of little Polaroids of all the guys and girls with who
it did not work out. Could even be quite funny...
or quite generally: "failures"
Early in April 06 an article appeared in the Süddeutsche Zeitung:
"The social scientific and journalist Jan Philipp Reemtsma once described what it means to loose: "Defeats are intolerable. A business bankrupt, a foot stuck at the crossbar, a catcall on stage, being thrashed out of the ring, defeated in love, all that makes one want to roar with pain..."
(The article's general topic was Oliver Kahn. And that Lehmann was nominated
keeper in the 06 World Championships.)
Usually all that pain becomes vehemently locked away. Everybody is always
only showing his/her successes, brushes everything else under the carpet...
and gradually feels very alone and powerless.
Outlook
VELORITO is a work of art that can be experienced only by doing and that
ideally obliterates the divide between player and public. The spectator
should and must be included in the artistic action so that art and daily
life can merge.
VELORITO is a concept, a collection of attitudes, definitions and rules,
out of which I intentionally created a quite open draft whose final format
always will strongly depend on the participants. Explicitly VELORITO is not
bound to me as the exclusive performer.
VELORITO is open source, with the same rules applicable as to software: the
work exists in readable and intelligible format, it may be copied, passed
on and used, it may be modified as desired, and may also be passed on in
modified form- however, I'd really appreciate some feed-back