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The Collection deals with the phenomenon of the Mourning Dress. EQUINOX__fabrics interseason® introduces the mourning dress as a significant object of sociological and cultural considerations and was presented friday, November 5th, 1999, 9pm. The site: sewerage system of Vienna, Wienfluss, U4-station Stadtpark
Concept text ___fabrics interseason:
EQUINOX fabrics interseason® is introducing the mourning dress as significant object of sociological and cultural considerations.
In most cultures, death is considered the biographical event where an individual is most closely linked to a greater collectivity or to society at large. In most pre-industrial settings, there have been rites for informing the surrounding community: by ringing church bells, by engaging ambulant death heralds ("Leichenbitter") or by fixing written notices in public places. In addition, the non-private character of dying is expressed by mourning rituals and funerals accessible to everybody, by the disposition of survivors to accept condolences from all sides, and by obituaries which celebrate the deceased as somebody who has made contributions to public life.
By contrast, birth or wedding celebrations are far more restricted to inner circles of family, kin and personal acquaintances. In our own society, this asymmetry is easily verified by comparing the size of death notices in newspapers with the tiny official birth and wedding announcements.
Conventional death announcements (posted by mail) are based on the premise that the surviving family members have extensive knowledge of the people acquainted or related to the deceased near enough to be informed and to be invited to the funeral. Of course, this is ideally the case only when these near acquaintances happen to be kin or inhabitants of the same community where the survivors are located.
It is evident that as a correlate of highly individualistic modern lifestyles and biographies that our different friends and acquaintances are less and less likely to be related to each other in any way - and even less likely to be members of an overarching communistic group.
Consequently, it is difficult to organize ceremonies in which all these individuals can participate, particularly when they are geographically highly dispersed (e.g. in the case of immigrants).
The range of mourners is even more unpredictable for individuals who were visible to a larger public during their lives or who experienced a "public death" (e.g. for victims of flight accidents or bombing events).
The role of "mourner" as a more and more partialized role. In traditional society, mourning after death is a "full-time activity" encompassing all aspects of private and public life. Mourners are recognizable by their black clothes, by their refusal to visit festivities, by the general air of seriousness pervading all their life, by their abstinence and the relative social isolation. More than in the past, modern mourning behavior concentrates on very special occasions: particularly on the funeral and very few later occasions (e.g. visits to the grave, commemoration rites in certain (e.g. catholic) settings etc.).
As a correlate of bureaucratic organization permeating society since the time of absolutism, death is extremely de-privatized on a legal and institutional level: e.g. by the governmental regulations concerning the duties of public notification, the time periods for interments, location and maintenance of graves etc. In addition, the 20th century has developed some extremely depersonalized forms of remembrance: like the extensive war cemeteries for honoring the dead of the World Wars. On the other hand, it is highly evident that typical activities related to death, burial and bereavement are highly dissociated from the subjective needs and preferences of the participant individuals as well as from the realities of contemporary social relationships and collective life.
In fact, it has been argued that these activities have been affected by the general processes of societal modernization. Even more: they are an excellent field for studying extremely archaic forms of thinking and behavior which have been wiped out long ago in all other spheres of society:
"Im Verhältnis von moderner Gesellschaft und Tod hat sich, wenn nicht alles täuscht, ein Höchstmaß an Unmodernität erhalten, ist ein Bereich sozialen Lebens zu identifizieren, der als primitivster Sektor industrieller Gesellschaft beschrieben werden kann." (Fuchs 1969) This also implies that religious institutions have still retained much of their earlier authority and influence: much more than in other spheres of individual life (e.g. birth, wedding etc.).
Paradoxically, the reliance on tradition may even be enhanced in modern society, because death has become extremely marginalized in daily life, so that survivors are not prepared to react in reflective individualized ways.
Under such stressing conditions, only two options seem to be available:
1) to delegate most processes to more experienced professionals
2) to choose extremely ritualized traditionalized responses, so that individualized, idiosyncratic expressions are avoided.
The function of ritualization is to avoid "queer" idiosyncratic responses not likely to be appreciated by other mourners. Of course, the use of professionals does not mean that tradition is neglected; instead, paid undertakers may even be more pressured to rely on highly standardized routines to avoid any kind of dissatisfaction. In addition, the reliance on "good tradition" is furthered by the fact that under conditions of modern life, the feelings, tastes and belief patterns of different kin and friends are so heterogeneous that every deviance from routinized patterns may engender serious risks of violating somebody’s expectations.
The reliance on highly standardized, traditional formats of mourning behavior is highly conditioned by the extreme pressures of time. Mostly, there are only a few hours available to reflect on the text and format of death notices, the choice of the mourning wardrobe, flowers or coffins and the conception of funeral rites - and everything has to be done in a way that expectations of important kin and friends are respected, so that nobody feels offended or disgusted (e.g. by displays of vulgar taste).
photos: Maria Ziegelböck
graphic design look book: Susi Klocker
sound presentation: egovacuum records/ soundtrack #03 by Susanne Brokesch, dj SIL |
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