Paper short abstract:

The paper widens the perspective of ephemeral memorials as public responses to violent deaths by approaching them as performative practice, analysing the dynamics between (media) narratives and materiality. As ritualised sites, memorials not only 'are' but also 'act' and interact with social reality.

Paper long abstract:

On November 2nd, 2004, the provocative movie director and publicist Theo van Gogh was murdered by a Dutch-Moroccan Muslim fanatic. The assassination, in Amsterdam, happened in the context of Van Gogh's habit of commenting bluntly on just anything, including Muslims, and of his production of Submission, a movie highlighting the relation between the abuse of Muslim women and the Koran. On the spot where Van Gogh had died a large ephemeral memorial took shape.

Taking the Van Gogh memorial as its empirical focus, this paper attempts to widen the prevalent perspective of ephemeral memorials as public responses to cases of violent death by approaching ephemeral memorials as performative practice. In this perspective, ephemeral memorials appear as ritualised sites that not only 'are' but at the same time 'act' and interact with the social reality that constitutes them. Analysing the dynamics between (media) narratives and the constituents of the memorial, the paper frames the material development of the Van Gogh memorial during its one-week existence together with its development as a medium within the contemporary Dutch public debate.