Making, Sharing and Extending Presence in Spontaneous Memorials. The Case of the 2017 Manchester Attack

Abstract

This chapter draws on theories of presence and the case study of the Manchester Arena bombing (22 May 2017) to discuss how spontaneous memorials in the aftermath of tragic events, such as terrorist attacks, construct embodied, performative, participatory, and social presences. It proposes three types of presence: Making Presence, which articulates the materiality-focused creativity involved in making memorial items; Sharing Presence, which focuses on the social experience of presenting those items to the spontaneous memorial site and being co-present with others; and Extending Presence, which argues that the previous two types of presences are reconstituted in the space of the museum that collects spontaneous memorials. The chapter’s key argument is that spontaneous memorials construct an embodied presence, which is expressed through creative materiality, physical journeying and social sharing. In turn, it is this embodied presence that is collected and ‘re-presenced’ in the space of the museum. This proposition contributes to academic scholarship on the motivations and purposes of spontaneous memorialisation and can inform strategies and practices of collecting, curating and managing such spontaneous memorials.

Introduction

Spontaneous memorials (also termed grassroots or temporary memorials or shrines) are practices that emerge after tragic events such as terrorist attacks and natural disasters. They often consist of thousands of notes, flags, t-shirts, soft toys and other objects. These memorials are often seen as a form of collective mourning and remembrance that provides solace and solidarity to affected communities. Literature on the relationship between spontaneous memorials and the notion of presence often focuses on two main aspects: firstly, on the loss and absence of the deceased (Banks, 2006; Santino, 2006; Yocom, 2006). In this context, spontaneous memorials represent and materialise the presence of absence. Secondly, as a result of the above, the presence of the bereaved is expressed and felt in and through the space and items of these memorials (Clark & Franzmann, 2006; Westgaard, 2006). They are, as Santino (2006: 12) calls them, ‘places of communion between the dead and the living’.

Both of these approaches put much emphasis on the function of spontaneous memorials as the (re)presentation of a relationship between the deceased and the people who participate in spontaneous memorialisation. Again, as Santino (2006: 13) argues, ‘spontaneous shrines place deceased individuals back into the fabric of society, into the middle of areas of commerce and travel, into everyday life as it is being lived’. Or as Hartley (2006: 297) puts it, ‘shrines, temporary as they may be, help crystallise that memory by establishing a visual marker for those not present during an event’. Similar assertions have been made by other scholars, such as Margry and Sánchez-Carretero (2011), and Gardner and Henry (2002), who reiterate that presence refers to the felt sense of being in the presence of the deceased, of the affected community, and of the event itself.

This chapter builds on and extends the argument of spontaneous memorials as places of communion with the bereaved to discuss how spontaneous memorials construct and communicate presences by and for the living too. Presences are about the individuals involved in the making of the spontaneous memorials and their participation in the sociality of those memorials. In turn, we argue that it is those presences (rather than solely, or necessarily, the presence of the absent deceased) that shape the rationale, value and use of those memorials when collected by museums and related cultural organisations.

We draw on theories of presence to discuss how spontaneous memorials construct embodied, performative, participatory and social presences. Accordingly, we propose three types of presence: Making Presence, which articulates the materiality-focused creativity involved in making memorial items; Sharing Presence, which focuses on the social experience of presenting those items to the spontaneous memorial site and being co-present with others; and Extending Presence, which argues that the previous two types of presences are reconstituted in the space of the museum that collect spontaneous memorials. We apply this theoretical framework to the case study of the spontaneous memorialisation in Manchester after the Arena bombing (22 May 2017). In the aftermath of the bombing, St Ann’s Square in Manchester city centre was transformed into a spontaneous memorial site, which took over most of the square over a period of a few weeks. In early June 2017, the square was cleared and most of the items of the memorial site were transferred to the Manchester Art Gallery, forming what is now known as the Manchester Together Archive (MTA), which the Gallery has since been looking after. Our analysis includes both the Making and Sharing Presence at the memorial site and the Extending Presence in the Manchester Art Gallery.

The chapter starts with an overview of the theoretical and methodological framework, followed by a discussion of how presence has been examined in the context of spontaneous memorialisation. Following that, the chapter turns to an analysis of the three types of presence that we are proposing, drawing on the case study of the spontaneous memorials in the aftermath of the 2017 Manchester attack. The chapter’s key argument is that spontaneous memorials construct an embodied presence, which is expressed through creative materiality, physical journeying and social sharing. In turn, it is this embodied presence that is collected and ‘re-presenced’ in the space of the museum. This proposition makes an original contribution to academic scholarship on the motivations and purposes of spontaneous memorialisation in the aftermath of disasters and mass violence. Also, it advances current theorisations of presence in spontaneous memorials and offers museums and related cultural organisations a new conceptual framework that can inform their strategies and practices of collecting, curating and managing such memorials.

Presence, Loss and Memorialisation

Presence Theory and Methodology

The chapter draws on three main theoretical approaches of presence. Firstly, we build on Hans Ulrich Gumbrecht’s notion of ‘presence culture’, which highlights the centrality of the human body in experiencing the world, in ‘being-in-the-world’ (Gumbrecht, 2004: 46; Gumbrecht’s discussion is based on a reading of Heidegger). For Gumbrecht, presence is an embodied and sensory experience, whereby the body is the site of experience and the senses create a sense of immediacy and intensity. We use Gumbrecht’s approach to presence to articulate Making Presence, namely the relationship that is formed in the interaction between people and their production of the spontaneous memorials’ materiality and creativity.

Secondly, we turn to Social Presence Theory (SPT), to talk about Sharing Presence. SPT (Lowenthal, 2010; Short et al., 1976) broadly suggests that individuals feel present when they perceive other individuals as being present too. SPT has been largely applied in digital communication studies and focuses on the interpersonal relationships and communication patterns that facilitate the sense of presence in mediated environments. Here we draw on it to talk about the production and sharing of social presence in spontaneous memorials. Social presence is, in this case, the outcome of what Émile Durkheim (1995) called ‘collective effervescence’: the experience of collective energy and heightened emotional intensity when people come together to participate in shared rituals or events. Our argument is that, in the context of spontaneous memorials, people may experience a sense of collective effervescence when they gather together to mourn and remember those who have been lost, and when they engage in collective rituals such as the lighting of candles or the laying of flowers. In turn, this produces social presence: people feel present because they see other people being present, by participating and contributing to the construction of and performativity around the spontaneous memorials.

Finally, we return to Gumbrecht and his notion of ‘broad present’ to discuss Extending Presence, the third type of presence at play in the aftermath of spontaneous memorialisation. Gumbrecht (2004: 121) argues that a broad present is ‘where we don’t feel like ‘leaving behind” the past anymore and where the future is blocked. Such a broad present would end up accumulating different past worlds and their artefacts in a sphere of simultaneity. We propose that the concept of the broad present can help understand the role, value and use of spontaneous memorials in museums or related cultural organisations that collect them. According to this, collections of spontaneous memorial items extend the presence that is made and shared in the sites of spontaneous memorialisation. An extended and broad present moves away from the temporal and temporary dimension of the spontaneous memorials. Instead, it collapses notions of past, present and future into a continuous presence of the memorials’ materiality, performativity, sociality and embodied immersion in the space of the museum.

In this chapter, we adopt a mixed-methods approach, combining methods from social semiotics and material cultural studies. The joint application of these methods is designed to combine observation and documentation with semiotic analysis. In other words, to use material, artefactual evidence to tease out contextual factors to interpret how the construction and meaning of collective presence at St Ann’s Square can be understood as part of an evolving process of social codes and practices in public mourning rituals. From a social semiotic stance, there must be an acknowledgement that all semiotic phenomena are diachronic, and that ‘the base line for the interpretation of any diachronic chain (such as spontaneous memorialisation) is its intersection with the material world’ (Hodge & Kress, 1988: 35). The use of such methods allows us to consider how these objects would function in their social and cultural contexts and asserts that the meanings they communicate are ‘inscribed in their forms’ (Appadurai, 1986: 5). The chapter draws, also, on a qualitative interview with Amanda Wallace, Senior Operational Lead of Manchester Art Gallery (23 August 2018). Amanda, who at the time of the 2017 Manchester attack was the acting director of the Gallery following the departure of the then director, led the collecting of the spontaneous memorials and the formation of the MTA. Also, the chapter makes a brief reference to interviews with other members of the Gallery staff (2018–2023), although these are not discussed in detail.

Spontaneous Memorialisation and Presence

Memorials have come to be an expected societal response to tragedy and are, often, born out of a growing cultural shift to materialise, negotiate and give presence to collective grief (Brennan, 2014). Often formed in response to unexpected, shocking and violent deaths that have occurred in public ‘safe’ spaces, most memorials are built at or close to the site of the event, as a way to instigate, as Rosenberg argues (2007: 55), ‘a particular kind of remembering grounded in the physical space of our present situation’.

The enactment of asserting presence around memorial sites is by no means a new phenomenon and relates to well-established, old practices of small-scale roadside shrines (Petersson, 2009). Such examples include wayside crosses and offerkast shrines, both of which are common across Scandinavia, as well as cairns, which can be seen across the British Isles. These examples can be traced back to Mediaeval mourning practices of the eleventh century and include material expressions of grief that are, like contemporary understanding of spontaneous memorials, inherently commemorative and performative (Santino, 2006). In the case of offerkast shrines, travellers would cast or throw an offering (typically a stick or small stone) upon the sites of unexpected, tragic deaths as a way to both honour the dead and to contest the acknowledgement of loss and absence by asserting their own living presence (Petersson, 2009). Similarly, Klaassens et al.’s (2013) visual content analysis of photos of 216 spontaneous and permanent roadside memorials in the Netherlands argues that the memorials aim to demonstrate and symbolise the fragility of existence and lost innocence, serve a social function of reminding of the toll of road accidents, establish continuing bonds with the deceased and function as a social and material statement to the outside world that they will be remembered.

However the large-scale spontaneous memorials that seem to temporarily take over public spaces are a sign of changing practices in the way that communities express mourning (Clark & Cheshire, 2004). Such memorials embody a tradition of mourning that is rooted in the process of making memories at a ‘communal, often national, level’ (Jonsson & Walter, 2017: 406), by seeking to frame traumatic events as narratives that reflect on loss and absence as a means of coping with, and making sense of, the present. To date, there is a range of literature concerned with the paradox of absence/presence, through which the notion of presence is described as a process of reconstituting loss by continuing bonds and connections with the deceased (Dimcheva, 2023; Doss, 2008; Jonsson & Walter, 2017; Kerler, 2013; Maddrell, 2013; Micieli-Voutsinas, 2017). Maddrell explores this paradox in relation to memorial artefacts, spaces, and performances, by drawing on the ‘apparent oxymoron’ that in death and grief an absence can have a presence (2013: 508). Here, absence-presence not only acknowledges death as an absence, but it also acknowledges a continued presence of the deceased, upheld by ongoing, still-existing bonds and relationships, which are expressed through spontaneous memorial items (Maddrell, 2013). Even more, according to Clark and Franzmann (2006), the belief in the presence of the deceased is a key factor in giving people (usually family members) the authority to create roadside shrines and memorials. This interpretation of the spontaneous memorial sites as places of communion with the deceased has impacted how the role and value of the memorial items are perceived. That is, they are seen as ‘memory objects’ or ‘linking objects’ (Hallam & Hockey, 2001; Maddrell, 2013) between the living and the dead.

In this chapter, however, we propose that the sense of presence found and created in spontaneous memorials often moves beyond reconstructing the absence of the deceased and instead creates opportunities to construct a range of presences for the living (Brennan, 2015; Neimeyer, 2000; Paliewicz & Hasian, 2016). Such memorials can, for instance, help re-establish connections to places affected by tragedy. As Jackson and Usher (2015: 94) observe, when violent and sudden shock occurs in the places and spaces people identify as home, they ‘might be abruptly reminded of their own mortality and might feel intensely violated’. The sense of helplessness felt through such violation can ‘create a need to do something; a need to reclaim spaces’ by asserting a social presence over affected places (Jackson & Usher, 2015: 94).

Such memorials can also help assert a sense of belonging and solidarity by bringing people together. For example, Truc (2018) argues that embodied participation in shared, communal grief helps communities work through their trauma in a more positive, socially conducive way. According to Truc (2018), studies have shown that by simply being present at and taking part in demonstrations or spontaneous memorials (he refers specifically to the Madrid bombings in 2003) individuals feel better and are able to adopt a more positive perception of the notion of social cohesion. Participants prepared to assert a physical presence and to show and express their mourning in public fora, are better able to move forward with a positive sense of hope and security about their environment, leaving them feeling better equipped to deal with the impact of trauma (Truc, 2018).

Finally, spontaneous memorials can also create opportunities to address social issues and call for social action. As Santino (2006: 7) suggests, makeshift public memorials are ‘dramatic social enactments’ that are transformational; they call out for social action and change by asserting an often unplanned, informal public (sometimes global) presence. As a performative act, the range of presences created at spontaneous memorials can strengthen social solidarity by bringing communities together, encouraging communication and creating collaboration (Haney et al., 1997).

As such, spontaneous memorials should be interpreted as more than an expression of mourning; they are social and performative events in public spaces where the enactment of embodied presence can ‘trigger new actions in the social or political sphere’ through shared dialogue and participation (Margry & Sánchez-Carretero, 2007: 1). As Margry and Sánchez-Carretero (2007: 2) suggest, the performance of mass memorialisation has the power to instigate public ‘political demands’ by streamlining social action and mobilising public feeling. They refer, for example, to the political unrest surrounding the murder of political protestor Carlo Giuliani (2001), the murder of Dutch politician Pim Fortuyn (2002) and the deaths of nearly 200 young people in the Cromagnon disco in Buenos Aires (2004). For each of these examples, the poignancy of social and political unease was felt more strongly through a growing, embodied presence of individuals and communities and through the formation of memorial sites in the places of those people’s deaths (Margry & Sánchez-Carretero, 2007).

Making, Sharing and Extending Presence of Spontaneous Memorials

The literature review above highlights that spontaneous memorials are often conceptualised as a reference to absent people; a material and performative presence of absence. However, this limits the understanding of people’s motivations in employing their creativity to make things, to journey to the memorial sites and to participate in their formation and shared experience. Also, it does not adequately explain why museums and other cultural organisations decide to collect and document spontaneous memorials.

To address this gap, we draw on notions of the embodied and broad present as theorised by Gumbrecht (2004) and social presence theory (Lowenthal, 2010; Short et al., 1976) to discuss the creative, social and museological presences constructed in and with the spontaneous memorials in Manchester in the aftermath of the Arena bombing in 2017. Through this analysis, our goal is to articulate expanded understanding of the kinds of presences produced in such memorialisation, which can shed light on the role, value and legacy of spontaneous memorials.

Making Presence

Gumbrecht (2004) argues that in a presence culture people inscribe their bodies into the world. In this sense, presence is experienced in and through our bodies. Gumbrecht is referring to those intense moments of having e.g. an aesthetic epiphany or some other lived experience that connects us with the world and its objects. Contrasting presence culture with meaning culture, Gumbrecht (2004: 126) warns us that:

in the long run, it may be impossible for us to refrain from attributing meaning to an aesthetic epiphany or to a historical object. But in both cases […] I have argued that our desire for presence will be best served if we try to pause for a moment before we begin to make sense – and if we then let ourselves be caught by an oscillation where presence effects permeate the meaning effects.

When it comes to the creation of spontaneous memorial items, such as written notes, painted rocks and pebbles, knitted hearts, handmade condolence cards, etc., there is a strong link between the notion of creativity and Gumbrecht’s meaning culture, which in this case translates to the process of reconstructing meaning in the aftermath of a traumatic event. For example, Brennan (2015: 294) posits that ‘creativity can enable individuals to reconstruct meaning in the wake of loss and ‘serve to transform existing reality’ (see also Dimcheva, 2023 in this volume). Our hypothesis and proposition, though, is that the relationship that is formed in the interaction between people and their production of the spontaneous memorials is first and foremost a creative and material expression of Gumbrecht’s call to ‘pause for a moment before we begin to make sense’. It is an action that mobilises people’s bodies, turning their emotions into a material creation. This process leads individuals, to use Gumbrecht’s words (2004: 137), to an ‘intense quietness of presence’,

by singling out […] strong individual feelings of […] sadness – and by concentrating on them, with our bodies and our minds; by letting them push the distance between us (the subjects) and the world (the object) up to a point where the distance may suddenly turn into an unmediated state of being-in-the-world.

In other words, the creation of spontaneous memorial items bridges people’s emotional and psychological state with the perceived shared world of fellow mourners. Irrespective of the meaning attributed to those items (e.g. by bystanders at the memorial site, the media, the collecting institutions, etc.), this creative and embodied engagement Makes Presence, which in turn can give agency to social recovery, by unlocking salutary methods of making sense of trauma and loss. As Mollica (2006: 157) argues, ‘the act of healing is (in itself) a form of artistry’ in the sense that participants actively seek to create something positive out of something destructive. On a public scale, journeying to, witnessing and taking part in shared, creative enterprise embodies a therapeutic response to the complex emotions of coming to terms with grief and loss, by giving physicality and presence to that which has been made absent, as well as to that which survives (see also Morgan, 2018; Truc, 2018).

On this basis, St Ann’s Square’s spontaneous memorial embodies the interactive, physical and material engagement of people with the traumatic event. These objects can be viewed as materialised evidence of individual, yet also shared and public feelings; in the days that followed the 2017 Manchester attack, various individuals, groups and communities came together in an act of resilience and solidarity that can be characterised as socially reparative. From the carefully written notes, letters and poems, artworks, and jewellery; to decorative painted pebbles and stones, handcrafted messages on wood, quilted blankets and knitted love hearts, the memorials represent the value and prominence of creativity and community togetherness and co-presence in times of uncertainty.

The drive to make presence through creativity is reflected in the care and artistic consideration taken throughout the design process of textile hearts. One example from the MTA supports this observation well and communicates the importance of asserting presence in the face of loss. This large object (measuring 175 cm in length) is presented as a garland of 22¹ individually hand-stitched hearts of varying colours and sizes. The hearts are collectively bound together by a single piece of white ribbon. Where the hearts themselves may represent love, condolence and grief for the 22 lives lost in the attack, the ribbon, which extends across the entire design, may represent the homogeneity and unity of mourners; that those affected, moved, or touched by the attack are simultaneously brought together and unified by common purpose. To further support the connection between creative engagement and mourning, this object also includes part of a poem, which is written in black capitalised ink and spans the entirety of the ribbon (Image 10.1). This text appears as followed:

WHEN GREAT SOULS DIE. AFTER A PERIOD PEACE BLOOMS SLOWLY AND ALWAYS IRREGULARLY. SPACES FILL WITH A KIND OF SOOTHING ELECTRIC VIBRATION. OUR SENSES. RESTORED. NEVER TO BE THE SAME. WHISPER TO US. THEY EXISTED. THEY EXISTED. WE CAN BE AND BE BETTER FOR THEY EXISTED.

Image 10.1

A garland of 22 individually hand-stitched hearts in the Manchester Together Archive, Manchester Art Gallery (Photograph by Robert Simpson)

Taken from the last stanza of Maya Angelou’s (2015) poem ‘When great trees fall’, these words aptly deal with themes of grief and bereavement, while offering hope that time will heal the painful wounds of loss. Despite their literary provenance, the sentiments expressed here do not seem out of place in the context of the public memorial at St Ann’s Square. As they stretch across the ribbon, these words feel socially relevant, forward-thinking, and positive. While they acknowledge tragedy and death, they also give weight to the process of healing. The expressive, natural image of ‘peace (blooming) slowly’ suggests recovery, growth and development; that from the destruction and violence of an attack, something socially positive and unique can be nurtured. And such spaces, which fill with ‘a kind of soothing electric vibration’, appear to cultivate the therapeutic value of shared, collective grief. Taking this space to be representative of St Ann’s Square, this image could be interpreted as a response to the energised and intense presence that built around the memorial and how such stirring scenes of public unification can be engaging, appealing, almost attractive, with its supportive, ‘social energy’ and creative, effervescent atmosphere (Kroslowitz, 2007: 249).

We accept that our analysis above is, de facto, an attempt to apply interpretative meaning to this item; a meaning culture over a presence culture, in Gumbrecht’s terms. But our argument here is that the spontaneous memorials are in their essence a material expression of a need to engage one’s body with the post-attack world (which will be further supported in the next section). We would take the argument even further by stating that the importance attributed to those memorial items relates to their material presence, rather than their interpretative meanings. This explains why the timing of removing and collecting of spontaneous memorials most often relates to weather conditions that affect their material presence. As Grider (2001: 2) notes, ‘spontaneous shrines lose their emotional impact and symbolic integrity when they become soggy, windblown, and tattered’. People Make Presence through their material spontaneous memorials and, as will be further discussed later on, it is this embodied presence that drives and explains museums’ decisions to collect them.

Sharing Presence

At spontaneous memorials, presence is asserted not just through the above-discussed creative engagement with memorial objects, but also with journeys taken to gift such objects and people’s participation in the spaces of the memorialisation. Scholars have talked about the leaving of items as sign of presence: Caffarena and Stiaccini (2011) refer to the leaving of messages as a sign of people’s presence in the space; Revet (2011) perceives the donation of objects as a communion with the survivors (rather than the dead); and Puccio-Den (2011) approaches people’s presence on the site as bearing witness. Similarly, research has also highlighted the participatory nature of spontaneous memorialisation (Milošević, 2017; Santino, 2006). Yocom (2006: 79) outlines this aptly with regard to the spontaneous memorials at the Pentagon after 9/11:

If people did not come to protest or to mourn the Pentagon building, the mementos they left suggest that one of the reasons they came was to be present at the site, both as individuals and as members of a group of mourners. Being present, though, is not a simple act. It was so important to many people to be present, for example, that if they couldn’t come in person, they sent a tracing of their hand or foot instead. Being present involves many acts of attention available to memorial visitors, among them doing, seeing, caring and forming both individual and shared memories.

We would like to focus on this public, performative and social aspect of presence at the site and acknowledge the social value of journeying to and participating in such memorials. We argue that this participation can be viewed as a symbolic and meaningful attempt to create an ameliorative and therapeutic presence over shared traumatic experiences by Sharing Presence. We draw on Social Presence Theory (SPT) (Lowenthal, 2010; Short et al., 1976) to discuss how the participants in the St Ann’s Square memorial constructed a shared presence, by feeling co-present with others in the space.

Research has documented how social sharing of emotions (in the form of in-person and online conversations) heightens after disasters or related traumatic events (Garcia & Rimé, 2019; Pennebaker & Harber, 1993; Rimé et al., 2010). This social sharing of emotion in events of collective trauma leads to what Garcia and Rimé (2019) call social synchronisation, which draws on Durkheim’s notion of collective effervescence (1995), the synchronisation of thoughts and actions among members of society. Garcia and Rimé (2019: 617) suggest that ‘it is not despite our distress that we are more united after a terrorist attack, but it is precisely because of our shared distress that our bonds become stronger and our society adapts to face the next threat’. Indeed, the shared, performative element of spontaneous memorialisation acts as a means of asserting a public, physical presence in an act of solidarity and encoding people’s memories to reflect on the social meanings and commemorative symbols connected to material objects and places (public spaces temporarily opened up as places of sacrality).

This builds on Gumbrecht’s embodied presence and extends it to the proposition that people experience a shared embodied presence in spontaneous memorial sites. Westgaard (2006: 156) notes that grief can often ‘create a feeling of community and solidarity among the grieving’; that through their shared response to unexpected death and tragedy, ‘relations are established among people […] through the common loss they have suffered’. In the event of a terrorist attack, this sense of common loss is felt tangibly and pluralistically across communities, so the act of coming together itself forms an important part of the social healing process; where shared behaviour represents a public response to the stress and trauma caused by acts of terrorism (Taylor, 2006). Spontaneous memorials capture the sense of a collective ‘embodied experience’ through the act of coming together to express grief openly and publicly (Ingold, 2011: 148; Davies, 2015; Maddrell, 2013). Ingold (2011) contends that our lives are like lines that form knots where they intermingle and collide with other lines; that our encounters and interactions with people and places form an accumulation of ‘meshworked’ events, attachments and bonds that ‘constitute our life experiences’ (Ingold, cit. in Davies, 2015: 231). Accordingly, we could argue that when these lifelines and knots are somehow damaged or disrupted by an unexpected tragedy, a need arises to create a sense of shared presence, as a way to restore and repair severed bonds so that those lives, connected to one another by and through embodied experiences, can feel safe, supported and able to return to normality. As Taylor (2006: 273) observes, ‘one of the most striking aspects of the human stress response is the tendency to affiliate […] to come together in groups to provide and receive joint protection in threatening times’. Indeed, such performances of social presence indicate a social need to close an open wound ‘inflicted on the whole group’ (Sánchez-Carretero, 2007: 8).

This form of togetherness is immediately visible in the notes and messages left at St Ann’s Square, where (on the whole) both the linguistic use and tone of plurality appear to work in conjunction with positive, inclusive, affiliative language, to bring people closer together, to nurture social bonds and to express care and support (Park et al., 2016). For example, phrases such as: ‘the city unites with hope and peace’ or ‘together we unite […] our bond is strong but our love is stronger’. Both examples here indicate how the language of plurality formed an important part of the collective response to the 2017 Manchester attack, by representing the extent to which terrorism pluralistically affects whole societies. With this in mind, the pluralistic, social encounters that grow around spontaneous memorials can be understood as conscientious expressions of affiliation; where the need to share, affiliate and come together stands as the moral imperative in the process of post-trauma recovery and reconstitution. In other words, the swell of activity surrounding makeshift, public memorials signifies a tear in the social meshwork, wherein severed knots need to be repaired and reconstructed in light of social cataclysm and grief (Davies, 2015; Ingold, 2011). As previous studies have noted, spontaneous memorials can prove socially beneficial in their ability to seek out social change by providing a platform for members of the public to work together collectively to challenge both the destructiveness and divisiveness of terrorism (Margry & Sánchez-Carretero, 2007; Truc, 2018).

Furthermore, the physical process of journeying, or pilgrimage; of walking to and around, of placing, displaying and laying objects at spontaneous memorials, can serve as a valuable form of memory-making, enabling mourners to either constructively act out their continued bonds with the deceased, by generating new memories and reminders, or strengthening their ties and bonds with the living, by asserting their presence and participation in the process of public mourning (Jackson & Usher, 2015; Jonsson & Walter, 2017; Maddrell, 2016). The notion of pilgrimage is a ritualistic form of journeying, connected to mourning practices. As Chan and Stapleton (2019: 391–392) discuss, pilgrimages have been ‘used for centuries all over the world to form a direct link between place and experience’, and can be understood as ‘meaningful’ performances, in that they ‘engage people […] through physical and spiritual participation’. This view is especially useful here, in that it helps broaden the discussion about why spontaneous memorials are so often successful in bringing such large crowds of people together in one place. Such memorials are highly concentrated, collectivised events, which represent a mass acknowledgement to embrace the process of expressing grief publicly, through a series of physical encounters with people, places and objects. Collectively, these experiences emphasise the phenomena of participation and remembrance, of asserting a physical and social presence over loss and absence.

In the case of the St Ann’s Square memorial, we position the physical journeys to and around the site itself as integral to the process of creating an individual and collective presence. Such responses indicate a social agreement to quantify shared feelings in material ways, in order to incite action and recovery; that the enactment of collectivised mourning needs to be made visible and palpable, in order to be publicly acknowledged and understood. Such physical and social encounters can be observed in how the layout and structure of the memorial accumulated around the needs of mourners. Generally, people did not arrive and stand motionless. Instead, people asserted their presence by wanting to move and walk, ideally around the mass of objects that lay before them. Thus, the growth of the site expanded in line with this requirement, so that it could always accommodate people walking around the site to visually engage with the objects. With this in mind, it is also interesting to note the actions and responsiveness of Manchester City Council with regards to the public’s need to journey to the memorial site and to be able to move around comfortably. Most notably, between 22 and 25 May 2017, a spontaneous memorial began to materialise at Albert Square (located outside Manchester’s Town Hall), where members of the public began leaving items such as flowers, cards, balloons, and placards. However, a decision was quickly taken by the City Council to relocate this rapidly growing memorial to St Ann’s Square; not only to make way for the second, formal vigil service (which took place outside the Town Hall on 25 May 2017), but also to create a more extensive and appropriate location, where the memorial could continue to grow.

This notion of movement and walking ‘shifts the burden of memory onto the individual—on the ground—stressing the ethical dimensions of remembering as an active, participatory practice and engaging us with the world’ (Rosenberg, 2007: 67). Thus, the embodied physical encounter with the memorial at St Ann’s Square elicits ‘collective experience’, which expands ‘beyond a single human perspective through the shared experiences of many individuals in a single journey’ (Chan & Stapleton, 2019: 392). With this in mind, we position the process of journeying to spontaneous memorial sites as a form of wayfaring; of navigating through social trauma as one would navigate through grief, by creating a sense of social presence.

In the MTA, one box stands out as an obvious example of this observation. In comparison to other boxes, this box is relatively empty and contains just 25 hand-painted pebbles. Of these 25 objects, 22 of them have been designed by the same creator, namely ‘Lost Moose Creations’. These pebbles (see Image 10.2) are similar in design and typically include motivational or inspiring quotes. All are brightly coloured, with a variety of pastel pinks, yellows and blues, making them aesthetically appealing to look at. They also include a clear varnish finish, which not only ensures added protection from the elements but also strengthens their material relevance as symbols of endurance. On the back, each pebble contains the slogan, ‘keep, give, leave’. In the context of public grief and mourning, these words take on a different meaning. Thus, the notion of ‘keep me’ implies remembrance; of taking something away from the memorial experience, as a keepsake or memento; a reminder. ‘Share me’ (or ‘give me’) on the other hand, endorses the value of social exchange and mutual interdependence as proactive routes to recovery. Finally, the instruction to ‘leave me’ signals the act of parting, with its implications of ‘letting go’. Many of the objects within this group are small and compact; objects that can be easily carried, shared and left at memorial sites. This may suggest that the size and portability of some memorial items accommodate the notion of letting go of grief in recognition of the cathartic value of leave-taking.

Image 10.2

A few hand-painted pebbles in the Manchester Together Archive, Manchester Art Gallery (Photograph by Robert Simpson)

In sum, the performative journeying and participating is designed to create a social presence, which in turn facilitates social remembrance and healing as necessary public mourning rituals. This can be seen in the visible care and time that is taken to create and design painted pebbles and textile hearts. It is clear that these objects were not made on site, but were instead handpicked, painted, designed (in some cases varnished) and thought about carefully before the creator embarked on their journey. Such actions suggest planning and premeditation as an acknowledgement of the cathartic and therapeutic value of journeying and sharing in the presence of loss.

Embarking on the physical journey to a memorial site (and attaching memory and meaning to material objects left) serves to connect participants not only to the event itself but with other individuals who have gathered to experience the swell of social presence built around the site, thus positioning such objects as both ‘a material form of dialogue’ and a marker of collective involvement (Kroslowitz, 2007: 247). Through such engagement, individuals and communities unlock opportunities to collectively make sense of tragedy and loss, by allowing a platform of sharing and remembrance to form as a way to navigate through social trauma.

Extending Presence

What is then collected, stored, conserved and valued in collections of spontaneous memorials in museums and related cultural organisations? And what notions of presence do such collections construct? To address this, we return to Gumbrecht and employ his concept of ‘broad present’. Broad present avoids the division of historical and contemporary present (and presence), instead placing things in a state of simultaneity. Understanding the museum legacy of spontaneous memorials through the lens of a broad present can help articulate the role and value of the material, creative, and social presence of spontaneous memorials in shaping their collecting and curating. In practice, this suggests that collections of spontaneous memorial items extend the Making and Sharing of presence. The spontaneous memorials demonstrate the individual and community’s need to create, participate in, share and experience presence through their own bodies and actions. In turn, it is the presence of the living (rather than solely of the deceased) that is represented and felt in the Manchester Art Gallery. In other words, the MTA embodies and extends the sense of presence people co-created and co-experienced in St Ann’s Square.

To discuss and evidence this Extending Presence, we examine the following two aspects of the MTA: firstly, right from the outset, the Gallery approached the spontaneous memorials as a public response to the event and its victims, rather than solely a memorial to them. Or, to put it differently, this memorial was seen as being comprised of thousands acts of creative and material engagement. To quote Wallace, ‘the material was essentially a single memorial, with thousands of constituent parts: from notes written on scraps of paper and thousands of cards and letters, to poems, pictures, soft toys, school art projects, football shirts, and personal tributes’ (interview with Amanda Wallace, 2018). This standpoint was significant, as it prompted the Gallery to consider the items as an active and creative expression of people’s need to give their emotions a material form. In turn, this informed how the Gallery approached the cataloguing and documentation of the collection. For example, this is being done on item level, whereby each item is catalogued separately, acquiring a unique catalogue number. This reflects the Gallery’s emphasis on the creativity, materiality and uniqueness of each item. Also, the use of fields such as ‘creator’, ‘type’ of object and a detailed description of the material characteristics, medium and design of the objects demonstrates that the Gallery views and values this material as the evidence and embodiment of people’s agency in Making Presence in the spontaneous memorial sites.

Secondly, the size and perceived completeness of the MTA have transformed the Gallery’s space into an extension of St Ann’s Square’s memorial space. Early on in the process, the Gallery decided to keep all the items deposited in the spontaneous memorial in the square (with the exception of the flowers and plants, which were respectively composted and re-planted; and of about 2,000 soft toys, which were donated to charities; see Arvanitis, 2019). Reflecting on this, Wallace states:

It was all significant. Actually, what was significant about it was the completeness of it, the fact that it was everything from amazingly intricate pieces of art to small ephemeral things. Everything was equally important in terms of expressing a moment in Manchester’s history, as a really key moment when people came together […] to express that sense of oneness. So, we made a deliberate decision to keep it all. (Interview with Amanda Wallace, 2018)

This decision not only further enhances the perception of the MTA as a ‘complete’ record of people Making Presence through their creativity and participation, but also contributes to a sense shared by Gallery staff and visitors alike that the St Ann’s Square memorial—the site where people shared presence—is itself present in the Gallery’s space. This can be supported by the following points. When refurbishing the room to host the MTA, the Gallery’s team inadvertently built a layout that reminds visitors of the actual memorial site in St Ann’s Square (Arvanitis, 2019): most of the memorial items are in drawers and shelves in the middle of the room, allowing a circular movement around them (see Image 10.3), which is what people were also able to do in St Ann’s Square. From a researcher’s perspective, this is a welcomed accident, in that the functional and symbolic role of walking still features in the way one engages with the physicality of the MTA. The room’s layout, along with the use of enlarged images of the memorial site and the bright colours of the deflated balloons in clear boxes (Image 10.4) transports people to the square at the time. This sense of being projected to the memorial in St Ann’s Square is further heightened by the smell of the numerous scented candles that are present in the room. This contributes to a sensorial and embodied engagement with the shared presence experienced in the spontaneous memorial sites.

Image 10.3

The space of the Manchester Together Archive, Manchester Art Gallery (Photograph by Kostas Arvanitis)

Image 10.4

Clear boxes that contain deflated balloons, scented candles, tea lights and other items from the spontaneous memorial sites in Manchester (Photograph by Kostas Arvanitis)

The above analysis supports the view that the MTA objects exist, in their post-memorial, museum setting, as a physical reminder of the embodied presence and performance of public grief, and can be viewed as artefactual evidence of a community’s response to public atrocity. In this context, an extended presence moves away from the temporal and temporary dimension of the spontaneous memorials in favour of a continuous presence of the memorials’ materiality, performativity, sociality and embodied immersion in the space of the museum. Bencard (2014), drawing on Runia (2006) and the notion of metonymy, argues that museums ‘transfer presence’ to the here and now. He calls that a ‘metonymically induced presence’ (Bencard, 2014: 37). He goes on to argue that ‘the museum is a storehouse of discontinuity—objects are torn from their contexts, removed from the flows that bore them, but the museum works to create continuity, to connect us to the past’ (2014: 36). In the case of the spontaneous memorial items at Manchester Art Gallery, the museum’s continuity lies in its aim to extend and manifest the physical, performative and emotional contexts and flows of the spontaneous memorial. Instead of the museum representing the spontaneous memorial, the latter continues to be present in and through the museum. In other words, the museum does not metonymically transfer the presence of the memorial in its (the museum’s) space; rather the museum space is transformed into the memorial’s embodied presence.

Gardner (2011: 292), referring to the interpretation and exhibition by the New York Historical Society of ash-covered shelves of the Chelsea Jeans store on lower Broadway, states: ‘As those memorial materials became museum objects, they arguably ceased to be what they were, instead becoming part of our institutionalised memories, isolated from the dynamic in which they were created’. This chapter argues that one way to tackle this challenge is to approach those items as an extended manifestation and continuation of the spontaneous memorialisation. To return again to Gumbrecht, this Extending Presence collapses any clear and distinct boundaries between spontaneous and museum memorialisation. By capturing and injecting the museum space with the material and social presence that people constructed and experienced in St Ann’s Square, Manchester Art Gallery adopts the principle of Gumbrecht’s ‘broad present’ (2004: 121): the spontaneous memorial in the square is not left behind and its future is not blocked; it continues to exist in the space of the Gallery. The memorial items do not cease to be what they were, are not becoming part of an institutionalised memory, and are not entirely isolated from the dynamic of the spontaneous memorialisation that created them. On the contrary, they extend the life and experience of this dynamic. As a result, the Gallery does not simply present or represent the memorials’ materiality, performativity and sociality; instead, it re-presences them.

However, this re-presencing of the memorials in the museum space is not unproblematic. It runs the risk of inhibiting museum professionals and organisations from exploring the meanings of spontaneous memorial collections. Museums do not simply accumulate stuff; they construct meanings, tell stories and assign value to the objects they collect. Indeed, the very act of collecting contains meaning. In Gumbrecht’s terms, museums take ‘action’, namely, they put meanings into things. So, when a museum takes ‘moments of intensity’ (Gumbrecht, 2004: 98) and preserves them as such in its space, this raises a number of issues. Firstly, it demonstrates the nervousness and uncertainty that museum professionals often experience when they face the task of collecting and curating spontaneous memorials, which fall outside their usual practice and frame of reference (Arvanitis, 2019). Secondly, it prolongs this sense of professional numbness, which does not help with taking a critical view of the meanings present or absent in the collected items. And thirdly, it can prevent, or at least hinder, fully embedding this collection into the organisation’s life, practice and policy. Longer-term, this can be problematic: focusing solely or mainly on the dynamism of the collection’s original context can potentially undermine the process of engaging dynamically with the evolving meanings, value and uses of the collection.

Indeed, these are issues that Manchester Art Gallery has faced. Following an intense first year of collecting, conserving and storing in 2017–18 (Arvanitis, 2019), the work on the MTA gradually slowed down. When the cataloguing of the material started in 2018, it was decided that the MTA would sit outside the Gallery’s core collection. Also, over the last six years, the team that led the MTA did not expand to include more Gallery staff, which meant that over time the MTA has been seen as the direct responsibility of only a handful of people. Furthermore, the creative and dynamic practice that Manchester Art Gallery followed in forming the MTA (see Arvanitis, 2019) did not, until recently, translate into institutional policy guidelines. In interviews with Gallery staff, it has become clear that one of the main reasons preventing them from fully integrating the MTA into the life of the Gallery is the ongoing nervousness around how to treat this material, which so vividly extends in its premises the Making and Sharing Presence expressed and experienced in the spontaneous memorial site. In other words, the more Manchester Art Gallery (not necessarily intentionally) approaches the MTA as a ‘reliving’ of the spontaneous memorialisation, the more ‘sacred’ this material becomes and the more removed from the Gallery surroundings and day-to-day life it stays.

Conclusion

Maddrell (2013: 517) argues that ‘memorials symbolize and evoke the dead as an absent presence as well as situating absence-presence and acting as a conduit for the practice of continuing relationship’. This chapter has shown that spontaneous memorials evoke the living too, through a presence made up of their individual creativity, social sharing, and embodied participation. Spontaneous memorials construct an embodied presence, which is expressed through creative materiality, physical journeying, and social/communal sharing. In turn, this embodied presence is reconfigured in the museum. The MTA material in Manchester Art Gallery is not simply a representation of the material and social response to the absence of the people that were killed, but a more-than-representational manifestation of, and emotional engagement with, the embodied presence performed in St Ann’s Square’s spontaneous memorial. The spontaneous memorial is produced by the embodied presence of people, their material creativity and their performative sociality.

Gumbrecht’s broad present as employed in this chapter allows for this intense, lived experience of spontaneous memorialisation, the ‘pause for a moment before we begin to make sense’ (Gumbrecht, 2004: 126), to be extended into the museum space. This is important because it acknowledges and responds to the significance of the events that led to such public, collective and shared reactions. But, even in Gumbrecht’s understanding of presence, this pause is followed by a process of making sense, namely an active engagement with the meanings, values and gaps constructed through collections of spontaneous memorials. The challenge for museums and other cultural organisations faced with the task of collecting and curating spontaneous memorials is to combine both: respond to the task by documenting the materiality, performativity and sociality of the memorials; and using this experience to develop a curatorial practice that engages actively and dynamically with the changing significance, meanings and uses of the material. Through a critical analysis of the usefulness and translation into practice of embodied, social and broad present/present theories, this chapter has offered a framework for understanding the role of Making, Sharing and Extending Presence in shaping museum practices of spontaneous memorials.