'I whish you were hear'
'I whish you were hear' is a quote lifted directly from a series of workshops I ran with children this year surrounding grief, and embodies the nature of my project; a proposal for a new mode of memorial and medium for intimate and unconventional engagements with loss. I am speculating the templates we lay out for the materialisation of bereavement, and removing a linguistic safeguarding from a conversation of death, so that mourners can connect more sincerely with the language and images chosen to commemorate life. A view of death, whether that's through the unspoken taboos we have learnt in adult life or the categories of metaphor expressed in cemeteries, is laid out on us like a fixed path, but actually death is one of the only things that remains speculative. It makes sense, then, that I would turn to children as a means of reimagining the spirit or tone of language around loss, as a child lacks the concern for polite, formal or euphemistic conversation. Children are more able to speculate. I want to treat the casual intimacies and informal expressions of love and connection with as much physical seriousness as traditional memorials.