Ecomemoria's Diasporic Space of Commemoration: A Tree-Planting Ceremony and its Living Memorial

Abstract

Ecomemoria comprises an intergenerational group of Chilean exiles living in the UK and in Chile who aim to keep alive the memory of and claim justice for those who were disappeared (desaparecidos) and killed (ejecutados políticos) during Pinochet's dictatorship (1973–1990). This piece draws on the authors' recent participation in a specific tree-planting ceremony performed by this group in Wales. By looking at the relocation of bodies, and the enactments and artefacts within the site-specificity of this event, a reflection on both the diasporic space developed and the unexpectedly complex character of the “living memorial” the group aims to cultivate will be elaborated. Ecomemoria's members match their living memory project with the trees that commemorate the life of the disappeared. Yet this conception here is complicated by highlighting the transnational, as well as the active, social, embodied and uncanny character of the ceremony which, as well be argued comprises a living memorial in its own right. This essay starts by briefly presenting Ecomemoria, to then describe and deconstruct the ceremony's diasporic and haunting qualities. Finally, to conclude, a much more complex idea of a living memorial will be developed in consideration of the mobile, affective, embodied and ghostly mise-en-scène the ceremony produces.