“Another lost tradition is the custom of smoking from clay pipes, which were filled with tobacco for visitors to the wake house to take. People would light the pipe and take a pull, exclaiming “Lord have mercy on their soul”. Non-smokers were fully expected to partake of the ritual and snuff was also taken. After the funeral, the wake pipes were ritualistically broken in two and buried outside. This persisted until the late 20th century, when trays of cigarettes were passed around at wakes instead of pipes, before the custom died out completely.” – The Evolution of the Irish Funeral, Marion McGarry.
Much of my practice Unit 2 has focused on the tensions between what can be defined as the ‘personal, ‘subjective’, or ‘situated’ and the objectifying inclinations of technology. In working through this project, I can see that it is contemporary media rather than technologies themselves (though these intertwine) that is emerging as the primary focus of my investigations.
I sought to engage with this concept more broadly, whilst remaining within the remit of my current project, by concentrating on the role objects play within our IRL/online lives. I am interested in the idea of vernacular versus institutional modes of grieving and sought to play with this dichotomy in a manner immediate and personal to me. Choosing funerary clay pipes, I have started personalising these cultural artefacts of grief with imagery gathered from social media accounts of those now dead. In this way, one’s personal data (as such objects are in the online ether) inform an existing tradition.
I feel this exploration may bare fruit moving forward, wit the possibility to elaborate on these illustrations, byturning them into paintings and (actual) clay pipes.
McGarry Marrion. (2021).The Evolution of the Irish Funeral, RTE, 19 August. Available at: https://www.rte.ie/brainstorm/2020/0415/1130559-ireland-funerals-wakes-death-rituals-coronavirus/