Commemorative Rituals Research Articles

Малые храмы на городище Эски-Кермен

First time in the historiography, this article analyses and summarises the information about 10 small churches uncovered on the plateau of Eski-Kermen and a semi-circular carved pit in front of the city gate, which is called the “apse” of the “gate church” that does not survive (III). However, the cult purpose of this carved structure remains questionable. The small churches belong to the same time with a single nave (naos) and a semi-circular apse. The narthex, probably of a later date, appeared only in 2018–2019 church (XI). The construction and structural characteristics of the churches in question are also very similar. Their builders used the foundations cut into bedrock, or the “beddings.” There was two-face masonry with the core of fine stones, broken pottery, clay, and soil. The churches were covered with tiled roof on wooden rafters. There is a church featuring remains of plinth pavement (IX), and another one with the pavement of polished stone slabs (XI). The destruction layers of four churches contained the remains of fresco paintings (VII, VIII, IX, XI). Some of the churches were adorned with architectural details with incised geometrical ornaments, sometimes with crosses. Most of the small churches of Eski-Kermen have preserved the remains of the altar and altar screen. Two churches (IV, VI) have small niches of prothesis in the wall to the left of the apse. Therefore, most or possibly all the small churches of Eski-Kermen were adapted for liturgy. Almost all the churches were also used for funeral and commemorative rituals, as different kinds of graves, including ossuaries, occurred in their complexes. The appearance of small churches atop of the plateau of Eski-Kermen has been dated to the ninth and tenth centuries and related to the intensification of urban life. Four churches (I, II, IV, V) were located at the access road and near the main town gates. Three churches (IV, V, VI) were built at the sites of former fortifications. Quarter churches (VIII, X, XI) are uncovered in three town quarters. According to the archaeological materials, one of them (X) dates from not earlier than the mid-tenth century, and another (XI) one at the turn of tenth and eleventh centuries. The latest is the cemetery church (IX) constructed in the fourteenth century at the ruined cathedral basilica, where the cemetery appeared after the destruction of the town by a raid of Nogay’s horde. A great part of the small churches probably perished along with the town in the late thirteenth century. The churches in the access road area (I, II, IV) were probably destroyed earlier, in result of an earthquake. Small above-ground churches are also known in the vicinity of Eski-Kermen. The remains of one of them occur in the fort of Kyz-Kule on a promontory to the north-west of Eski-Kermen. Presumably, there was another church at the foot of this mountain.

Praying with Blathmac

The mid-eighth-century Old Irish text known as the poems of Blathmac is a long devotional composition meditating on the mystery of Christ’s cross and its significance for salvation history. Since the discovery and subsequent publication of the text nearly six decades ago, the work has garnered considerable scholarly interest for its linguistic and socio-historical value, but many aspects of its devotional orientation remain less systematically explored. This article examines the poems’ devotional discourse by focusing on the intersections of martyrdom and memory in Blathmac’s composition. Taking as a starting point the text’s intended use as a prayer, the discussion considers how the text’s overarching interest in exemplary acts of self-sacrifice relates to the practices of ritual commemoration, and how these strategies of collective memory work to convey and sustain a shared understanding of Christian identity.

Souls of contention and incommensurate mourning: commemorative rituals in contemporary China

ABSTRACT This article examines commemorative rituals performed by local activists in the People’s Republic of China (PRC) for a group of forgotten soldiers who died in the Second World War. In a departure from the dichotomies found in current studies of ritualised remembrance between, for example, the state and the local, modern and traditional, and secular and religious, it probes how local communities incorporate the politicised rituals imposed by the Party state into their practices of mourning for the marginalised spiritual beings depicted in political propaganda. The data on these rituals, which were gathered in Hunan province where the largest number of bloody war battles occurred, are used to explore how the activists remember the war and venerate the fallen Kuomintang (KMT) soldiers. This article explores the ‘incommensurate mourning’ caused by the state’s political stigmatisation of the KMT during the Communist period and how the memorialisation of the war has been instrumentalised to promote nationalism in the state’s campaigns since the 2000s. In an attempt to reveal the injustice that the deceased faced and to revive the erased local history, Hunanese ‘redress activists’ organise public mourning rituals for two groups of war dead that are segregated by the degree of violence that caused their ‘second death’, which made it impossible to mourn the dead (Zhang 2013a). The first group are the Kuomintang soldiers whose graves were demolished, the second group are the unidentified soldiers who died in battle. Different posthumous afterlives of the perished soldiers engender distinct political and cultural barriers for the mourners. By foregrounding how the local activists incorporate the state’s soul-governing practices (Kipnis 2017, 2019) into their commemorative rituals, my analysis shows how these ritualised acts of remembrance challenge the Party’s monopoly of who counts as a ‘glorious soul’ in politicised acts of commemoration.

Re]-appearances online: photography, mourning and new media ecologies for representing the Southern Cone’s disappeared on two digital memory platforms

The practice of enforced disappearances fundamentally alters memorialisation rituals as relatives do not have a body to localise mourning as is possible with processes of death. Families in the Southern Cone of South America (Chile/Argentina) have sought new ways to remember the dictatorship missing who remain in a liminal space between life and death. As a vehicle to represent public grief, photography became vital; families marched with photographs of their disappeared relatives on placards or pinned to their chests. Studies on the importance of photography and disappearance have come some way in elucidating the photographic medium’s unique role of in representing the disappeared. However, little scholarship has looked at the role of photography and new media in these histories. Charting the use of photographs in Chile and Argentina to represent the disappeared and their families’ grief, this article engages with their suspended mourning drawing on content and visual analysis alongside expert interview data. By analysing two websites that reproduce photographs of the disappeared: www.memoriaviva.com and www.recordatorios.com.ar, the article looks at the use of photography in the digital ecology. Both sites show photography’s continued importance for rituals of remembrance and to demand accountability in the present and for the future.

Feeding Iran: Shi`i Families and the Making of the Islamic Republic by Rose Wellman

Reviewed by: Feeding Iran: Shi`i Families and the Making of the Islamic Republic by Rose Wellman Anne Meneley Wellman, Rose. Feeding Iran: Shi`i Families and the Making of the Islamic Republic. Berkeley: University of California Press, 2021. 263 pp. Nuclear weapons, contested treaties, and fraught international relations are at the forefront of what Western audiences hear about Iran these days. In Feeding Iran, Rose Wellman offers us something quite different: a rare window onto the quotidian lives, including the foodways, of those who support the current Iranian state, in contrast to the dissident voices within and outside of Iran. Wellman's ethnographic fieldwork took place amongst the Iranian Basij, the paramilitary group that supports the principles behind the Iranian revolution of 1979. These Basiji Iranians are committed to the Islamic Republic, in contrast to those it describes as "Westernstruck." Wellman's primary field site for a year and a half is the provincial town of Fars-Abad, where she was not quite family, but also not quite a guest for the duration of her fieldwork, abiding by the standards of respectability of her host Basiji family, participating in their vibrant social life of hosting and visiting as well as in their everyday chores of cooking and preparing food. While the term "paramilitary" normally evokes political or religious extremists, that is not the view we get from Wellman's book. Instead, we read of the very ordinariness and practicality of these Basiji families, as they attempt to live decent lives. The proper comportment of their bodies is envisioned as essential to their own souls, the moral and physical wellbeing of their families, and to the ongoing success of the Islamic Republic. Far from the state unilaterally imposing ways of being on their people, she shows how Basiji understand their everyday practices to uphold the state and its current interpretation of the Shi`i Islam. Religion is not cordoned off as a separate sphere; the words and traditions of the Prophet Mohammad and his martyred grandson, Imam Husayn, continue to inform [End Page 907] quotidian behaviors of Wellman's interlocutors. These texts are consulted to make interpretations of everyday events and to justify actions and decisions. Wellman also demonstrates how for her Basiji interlocutors, the more recent religious history of the 1979 revolution overthrowing the Shah permeates everyday life. Equally important are the effects of another key historical moment: the eight-year, Iran-Iraq war from 1980 to 1988. The everyday effects of the vicious violence and the chemical weapons are still felt in the persistent coughs of the veterans, the injuries of the survivors, and the dead, numbering in the hundreds of thousands, who are understood as martyrs. The book opens with a moving account of a reburial of two of these unknown martyrs in the town of Fars-Abad in 2010, brought from the border of the Iran-Iraq war during the yearly commemoration of this war. The ceremony, both military and religious, culminates in a collective shared meal of lentils and rice, introducing us to the main theme and undoubted strength of the book, the weaving of food, kinship, religion, and commitment to the state. These commemoration rituals involve careful cooking and distributing of foods as a means by which local participants constitute themselves as pious religious individuals and committed subjects of the Islamic Republic. The first chapter is entitled "Blood, Physio-Sacred Substance, and the Making of Moral Kin." Wellman, inspired by the work of Susan McKinnon, Janet Carstens, and Gillian Feeley-Harnik, breathes new life into the anthropological study of kinship, offering nuanced discussions of how patrilateral, matrilateral, and milk kinship continue to structure quotidian lives in Iran. Lest we become too fixated on biological kinship, Wellman demonstrates how essential food (beyond breast milk) is to actively creating these kinship ties. Her reflections on how the "esteem" of the descendants of the Prophet, the sayyeds, and their "physio-sacred" position in local communities is recognized, and in many ways constituted, by food practices is particularly interesting. In the second chapter, "Feeding the Family: The "Spirit" of Food in Iran," Wellman describes how, in this context, food is never separate from morality. Food is always "religio...

PERSONIFICATION AS A STRATEGY OF HISTORICAL POLICY IN UKRAINE

This article analyzes personification as a historical policy strategy, which consists in the memorialization of certain historical and cultural figures. The relevance of this analysis is determined by the dominance of this strategy in modern historical policy as well as its popularity among various policy actors in Ukraine at different levels of executive power. At the same time, the choice of this strategy is usually not substantiated in official documents, which entails that conclusions can be drawn mostly based on policy results, retrospectively. The author outlines the genesis of personification traditions in Ukraine, formed within the frameworks of citizen, activist and patriarchal types of political culture. Ukraine’s inclusion into imperial entities such as the Russian Empire and the USSR led to a significant impact of imperial memory policy on the traditions and formats of commemoration in Ukraine. The study focuses on the phenomenon of “vozhdism” (leaderism) and the formation of the Soviet official pantheon. The author attempts to define the concept of pantheon as an imaginary set of iconic figures of history and culture, recognized as worthy of homage in the civic rituals of common commemoration. There is a correlation between the functions of the national pantheon and the choices of figures made as well as the appropriate vocabulary required. This correlation is illustrated through perceptions of heroes, which often become an instrument of ideological mobilization. Modern historiography offers an alternative understanding of heroes, with an emphasis on cultural, ethical and academic leadership. This understanding is increasingly influencing the formation of historical policy, particularly in Ukraine. It is also promising to interpret heroes as integrators, especially given the challenge of consolidation facing historical policy in Ukraine. The findings suggest that personification is neither a universal nor a self-evident tool for achieving this goal. There are other promising strategies focusing on events (“eventfulness”) and processes (“procedurality”).

Mourning Alone Together

In the current context of pervasive loss and the absence of publicly commemorative rituals, this essay proposes a reading of Freud’s ‘Mourning and Melancholia’ that questions the presupposition that mourning must come to an end as the completed work of memories recalled only to be sent off. While melancholia may be presented as the invention of an imaginary loss, would not the real pathology of mourning be the summary or precipitous declaration of its end? Whether we understand mourning as completable in itself or as impossibly seeking an asymptote it can never reach, whether the work of mourning is terminal or interminable, the name of the deceased stands as what is left, not only as what is inscribed on a gravestone and outlasting any living memory, but also as the very bounds of memory as sense. Not so much the end of mourning, then, as its reiterative reaffirmation, commemoration comes down to a practice of active mourning (like active forgetting), not an ‘end’ but its retreat, its appearing/disappearing as the incessant redrawing of its withdrawal. Not a self-deprecating melancholia, nor the indulgent luxury of nostalgia, but the endless inscription of a name whose loss we can never stop mourning.

Pilgrimage Respecified: Falklands War Veterans’ Accounts of their Returns to the Falkland Islands

In 2002 the South Atlantic Medal Association organized its first ‘pilgrimage’ to the Falkland Islands. Pilgrimages to the islands have since become a regular occurrence. Battlefield ‘pilgrimages’ are seen not only as a ritual of remembrance of the dead, but as a cathartic act of personal and bonded-group self-affirmation, understood by many as an essential element of the psychological healing process after war. Yet public and media representations are dominated by images of parades, memorials and wreath laying and largely exclude the voices of the veterans and the bereaved. Using memoirs, oral testimonies, autoethnography, veterans’ associations newsletters and social media sites as sources, this article respecifies the phenomenon of the ‘pilgrimage’, stressing the unique adequacy of members' practices amonst themselves as constitutive of the pilgrimage experience. The paper questions the future of the Falklands pilgrimage cultural practices as veterans of this conflict age, and the meaning and location of sites of pilgrimage change.

Perinatal bereavement care during COVID-19 in Australian maternity settings.

Perinatal bereavement care is a complex area of practice. The COVID-19 pandemic led to reconfiguration of maternity and perinatal bereavement care services. This study explores Australian health care providers' perspectives of the impact of COVID-19 on the provision of respectful and supportive care following stillbirth or neonatal death. Members of a perinatal bereavement care network were consulted at the commencement of the pandemic in Australia using an online feedback form. Respondents provided ratings and free-text comments on the impact of COVID-19 on implementation of 49 recommendations contained in the Perinatal Society of Australia and New Zealand/Stillbirth Centre of Research Clinical Practice Guideline for Respectful and Supportive Perinatal Bereavement Care. Responses were received from 35 health care providers who provided perinatal bereavement care in clinical settings or through support organisations in Australia. Major impacts of COVID-19 were reported for 8of49 guideline recommendations. Impacts included reduced: support for mothers due to visitor restrictions; availability of cultural and spiritual support and interpreters; involvement of support people in decision-making; options for memory-making and commemorative rituals; and staff training and supervision. Adaptations to minimise impacts included virtual consultations, online staff training, use of cold cots, and increased staff support for memory-making. Health care providers encounter substantial challenges as they strive to implement best practice perinatal bereavement care in pandemic conditions. Some practice adaptations developed during the COVID-19 pandemic could benefit parents; however, evaluation of their effectiveness and acceptability is needed.

Commemorative Events and Public Rituals: Redefining Our Leisure Engagement with Violent Death As Healing Practice And/through Social Activism

The article examines the concepts of public grief and social activism in the context of commemorative events, such as candlelight vigils. These candlelight vigils can be viewed as a form of leisure activity as individuals freely chose to attend the event during their free time. Attending such events has the potential to provide therapy to the attendees and contribute towards their well-being, similar to the phenomenon of individuals visiting roadside memorials and locally created shrines following an unexpected and/or violent death. The article focuses on the candlelight vigils held to commemorate high profile murders of women as part of the violence against women focus in Victoria, Australia. These events also provide attendees with the opportunity to engage in social activism, reinforcing that these events provide the opportunity to engage in a blend of both private and public mourning; and may encourage social good via activism, which also may be a form of therapeutic practice for well-being. The article introduces the concept of grief leisure as a way to conceptualize the attendance at public event vigils as a therapeutic practice to help deal with grief.

Nation-Statist Soteriology and Traditions of Defeat: Religious-Zionism, the Ninth of Av, and Jerusalem Day

AbstractWe ask how the theopolitics of a nation-state, and especially its soteriology, engage with traditions that preceded the state and relay messages that contradict this theopolitics. To discuss this question, we address the evolving (re-)interpretation of the Ninth of Av—a ritual commemoration of the destruction of Jerusalem and the end of Jewish (Judean) self-rule in ancient times—by Religious-Zionist commentators. We further compare this interpretation to the Religious-Zionist appropriation of Jerusalem Day, a civic holiday celebrating the establishment of Israeli control over East Jerusalem in the June 1967 war. We argue that the statist imperative of the superiority of nation-statist theopolitics suggests that traditions are co-opted to fit in with its soteriology, with varying degrees of resistance or willing accommodation by carriers of these traditions. This co-opting may result in either the de-politicization of what the statist view would see as religion or the religionization of the state's own civic and so-called secular holidays.

Creating Atmospheric Coherence through Commemorative Rituals, Singing Partisan Songs, and Rehearsed Affect

U ovom se članku opisuje komemorativni događaj koji se održava u Janču pokraj Ljubljane te ga se smješta u širi okvir diskursa komemoracija u postsocijalističkom kontekstu u Sloveniji. Načini postizanja ritualizacije prošlosti i sadašnjosti te posredovanja između njih analiziraju se pomoću vizualnih i zvučnih sredstava stvaranja afektivnih atmosfera. U tom je diskursu glazba sredstvo koje objedinjava kako sudionike događaja tako i odnose prošlosti prema sadašnjosti. Članak se bavi reaktualizacijom partizanskih pjesama u kontekstu zborskog pjevanja nakon 1991. godine, a ističu se razlike između reaktualizacije kod aktivističkog i “tradicionalnog” zbora. Politička polarizacija utemeljena na različitim interpretacijama povijesnih događaja iz razdoblja tijekom i nakon Drugog svjetskog rata u postsocijalističkoj Sloveniji odražava se i u heterogenim iskustvima glazbenih izvedbi skladbi iz razdoblja narodnooslobodilačkog pokreta. Ta se tvrdnja ilustrira citatima iz osobnih narativa pjevača zbora Zora Janče sakupljenih nakon komemorativnog događaja. Narativi otkrivaju internu dinamiku koja se povezuje s osobnim doživljajem pjevanja kao i s odjecima kolektivnog pamćenja, prošlosti, povijesti, politike i osobnih iskustava. O heterogenosti doživljaja raspravlja se iz perspektive uloge koju uvježbana ili simulirana afektivnost ima pri stvaranju koherentne afektivne atmosfere.

Mortuary Landscapes Revisited: Dynamics of Insularity and Connectivity in Mortuary Ritual, Feasting, and Commemoration in Late Bronze Age Cyprus

The aim of the paper is to discuss mortuary contexts and possible related ritual features as parts of sacred landscapes in Late Bronze Age Cyprus. Since the island was an important node in the Eastern Mediterranean economic network, it will be explored whether and how connectivity and insularity may be reflected in ritual and mortuary practices. The article concentrates on the extra-urban cemetery of Area A at the harbour city of Hala Sultan Tekke, where numerous pits and other shafts with peculiar deposits of complete and broken objects as well as faunal remains have been found. These will be evaluated and set in relation to the contexts of the nearby tombs to reconstruct ritual activities in connection with funerals and possible rituals of commemoration or ancestral rites. The evidence from Hala Sultan Tekke and other selected Late Cypriot sites demonstrates that these practices were highly dynamic in integrating and adopting external objects, symbols, and concepts, while, nevertheless, definite island-specific characteristics remain visible.

The Politics of Calendars: State Appropriations of the Contested Iranian Past

This paper seeks to investigate how commemorative practices, rituals, and holidays are invented, deployed, and recast for political and ideological purposes, to reinforce and sustain a particular narrative of national identity. It argues that the choice of particular moments of a country’s past to be commemorated in calendars as national holidays and the way in which the collective past is preserved and remembered both reflect and articulate a country’s vision of its present essence, of who its people are. Recognizing the link between the collective memory and national identity, the Iranian states before and after the 1979 revolution made a special effort to articulate their narrative of the past by commemorating a particular set of holidays and rituals. Viewing the calendar as a political artifact, this paper compares changes in the Iranian national calendars in the Pahlavi era (1925–1979) and the Islamic Republic (1979–2018). It examines the inclusion of new religious holidays and the removal of national days associated with the monarchy as well as the assignment of new meanings and celebratory practices to the old ones as the signifiers of a political maneuver to articulate a new shared public memory and narrative of identity since the 1979 revolution. It then examines two nationwide celebrations before and after the 1979 revolution, representing two state-sponsored, competing narratives of Iranian identity: firstly, the 2500-year celebration of the Persian Empire in 1953, and, secondly, the Ashura commemoration, a religious gathering dedicated to the remembrance of Shia Imams. These commemorations provided the state a unique political opportunity to present its own appraisal of the past and, in turn, national identity.

Sacred (re)Collections

Abstract This article discusses how state-organized, memory-cultural production drawing on religious signifiers contributes to a sacralization of Turkish public memory institutions and public space. This reinforces an Islamic-nationalist imagination of contemporary Turkey. The article explores state-led, disciplinary interventions in museal space (the Sacred Trusts exhibition of relics at Topkapı Palace Museum) and commemorative ritual in public space, display and education (the rise, fall and recalibration of Holy Birth Week (Kutlu Doğum Haftası). Drawing on theories of symbolic politics, nationalism, memory and space, the article elucidates the sacralization of Turkish memory production as a contesting yet malleable negotiation of nationalism. Innovative Islamic memory practice and ritualization requires careful discursive and disciplinary boundary drawing, catering to theological sensitivities and Sunni-orthodox mores. Then again, the spatial boundaries between various memory-cultural domains are becoming less distinct. Today, Islamic-nationalist imaginaries surface in the interstices of public memory institutions, public education and everyday public space.

Die Begriffsfeier

The Celebration of Concepts. On the Homology of Festival and Hymn in Hölderlin and in the French Revolution The present contribution aims to show that Hölderlin’s Tübingen hymns from 1790 to 1794 are influenced by the festivals of the French Revolution and its hymns. The Revolutionary festivals are staged as epochal rites of passage seeking to enact the turn towards a new age. Hölderlin’s hymns follow the dramaturgy of the festivities and thus represent a festive poetics. The homology of festival and hymn, typical of the period, conditioned their convergence in the political movement of the eighteenth century. Self-expression through joy serves the bourgeois self-assertion; it is reflected both in a new, self-referential festival type and in the release of the movere principle in literature. Against this background, the solemnity inherent in the hymn becomes topical, and in the context of the republican emotional culture, hymnal enthusiasm serves as self-affirmation. The movement of language and emotion that has been inherent in the hymn since Klopstock thus gains political valence and makes it the ideal genre for staging the movement of awakening and departure. In the late, post-revolutionary hymns the festival is a commemorative ritual recurrently executing the temporal transition in the historical present.

The Rider and the Coffee Maker: Sites and Practices of Remembrance in Contemporary Namibia

ABSTRACT In light of recent interventions by artists and activists, this article explores key contestations around colonial monuments in today’s Namibia and asks not only what monuments can do but also what the limitations are in providing a radical break with the colonial afterlife in this country. What forms of memorialisation are activated through monuments and monumental institutions? How can they be understood as markers of history as well as proposals for overcoming this history? This article will first explore the context of and discourse around the statue of the Reiterdenkmal and the Independence Museum, which “replaced” it, before moving to alternative sites and rituals of remembrance which might give insights into possible public and collective processes of decolonisation – as demanded by the current protests.

Singing “Past, Present and Future”: Music in Early American Commemoration

AbstractConstantly fearful about the fragility of the young republic in the decades following the Revolutionary War, Americans assiduously organized commemorative rituals. While historians have examined these commemorations, music's place in them has yet to be fully understood. By highlighting key themes in cross-regional, cross-racial discourse on commemoration and drawing on rich records preserved from Bennington, Vermont, this article exposes the varied purposes for which Americans used music in commemorations from the 1780s to the 1810s. In early postwar commemorations, Benningtonians used music to emphasize gratitude and virtue and educate local youth about proper behavior. As political rifts developed in the 1790s, community members also used music to articulate contemporary politics in terms of the revolutionary past and exhort their neighbors to take political action. To sustain these practices as new generations matured without firsthand experience of the war, locals used music to cultivate stronger ties to the battle. As Bennington illustrates, music provided a powerful means of shaping Americans’ perceptions of the past to urge them to action in the present for outcomes envisioned in the future, compellingly anchored in terms of gratitude, virtue, and memory.

Поминальный обряд в этнокультурном ландшафте удмуртской деревни

В статье на основе полевых материалов автора рассматривается узколокальный обряд поминовения покойных, умерших на чужбине и неестественной смертью, - чекан, который по сей день проводится жителями двух родственных деревень - Калашур (удм. Вуж Тӥгырмен) и Дубровский (удм. Выль Тӥгырмен) Киясовского района Удмуртской Республики. В церемонии участвуют представители только этих деревень, приезжают уехавшие в другие районы односельчане. Он совершается раз в четыре года в июне високосного года. Место проведения обряда находится ниже по течению реки Шехостанка (удм. Миёл) относительно д. Калашур, местные жители называют его «чекан/чекаськон иньты». От номинации обряда получили название и все прилегающие объекты окружающего пространства (родник, луг, жертвенная ель и т. д.), которые не утратили своего сакрального значения и в настоящее время. Неоднократное участие в ритуале и наблюдения позволили сделать следующие выводы: 1) традиционное место проведения обряда каждый раз смещается ближе к д. Калашур; 2) уменьшается количество участников церемонии, в том числе приезжих односельчан; 3) сокращается обрядовый сценарий, упрощаются его структурные элементы. Таким образом, трансформируется первоначальный религиозно-культурный ландшафт деревни. Based on fieldwork, this article examines a local Udmurt commemoration ritual called Chekan, which is strictly associated with one of the summer months of leap years and included in the cycle of commemorative rituals dedicated to a particular category of deceased - people having died abroad and by non-natural causes. The participants in this ritual are only the inhabitants of two related villages, Kalashur (in Udmurt Vuzh Tigyrmen) and Dubrovskiy (in Udmurt Vyl’ Tigyrmen) in the Kiyasovo District of the Udmurt Republic, as well as people who had left these villages but came back on purpose to attend. The ceremony takes place downstream of the Shekhostanka River (in Udmurt Miyol) relative to the village of Kalashur; locals call it “chekan/chekas’kon in’ty” (“the place of the Chekan/Chekas’kon”). Everything in the surrounding space (the spring, meadow, sacrificial spruce, etc.), includes “Chekan” - the name of the ceremony - in their designation and continues to preserve a sacred significance. Repeated participation in the ritual has allowed the author to reconstruct its diachrony, to describe its synchronic forms and to follow the evolution of the ritual scenario. The infrequency of the ritual has led to the reduction and simplification of its structure, a decrease in both in quantitative participation and in its diversity, as well as to a change of place. In general, the waning of this tradition has entailed a significant transformation of the cultural and religious landscape of the village.

Rosa Naday Garmendia: Artist Statement and Art Work

A series of photographic images depicting the artwork of socially engaged, multidisciplinary artist, Rosa Naday Garmedia, as well as a statement supporting the background of the art. The images depict selected installation views of the "Rituals of Commemoration" at the Corcoran Gallery, an ongoing project started in 2014. This iteration of the Commemoration project presents the most named bricks, 469 of the 1,252 representing lives of black men and women killed by police or security guards across the United States between 1979 to date.