Introduction: Coining the Coin-Tree

Houlbrook, Ceri

doi:10.1007/978-3-319-75517-5_1

Cited by 1 publication

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“…The association of ritual and materiality has been studied extensively in archaeology (Insoll 2011), including the archaeology of the contemporary world, where ‘ritual litter’ has become an issue in heritage management (see Orange and Graves-Brown 2019; Blain and Wallis 2008). Frameworks for ritual can include paganism, folklore, mysticism and mainstream religious beliefs (Thurgill 2016, 136–84; Houlbrook 2014, 87–88, 166–67, 194–96; 2018).…”

Section: Attachment To/operation In ‘Community’ Structuresmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…On a transit path through the grounds of Strawberry Hill House, a heritage site adjacent to Queen Mary University (Twickenham, London, UK), students are encouraged by the university authorities to attach personal wishes expressed on paper, such as ‘I want to pass my finals’ to a specific tree (personal observation, January 2020). Some UK national parks and nature reserves provide ‘attraction’ maps guiding visitors to trees where other visitors have cumulatively pressed coins into the trunks, despite the fact that massive depositions of this type have sometimes endangered the health of trees (Houlbrook 2014, 157–59; 164–65; 181–88). Yarn bombing, also discussed here, has been invited into some public urban spaces by their managing authorities, even while it is contested in other similar spaces as environmentally damaging (BBC News 2015; Hahner and Varda 2014, 301–2).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

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Consumers, curations, ‘community’, contestation and the time of COVID-19. Linkages and perspectives

Wallace

2022

Arch. Dial.

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Reification of ‘community’ and community engagement by professional curators of material culture has recently been critiqued in ways which highlight the diversity of cultural identities and priorities among the general public. When not acting as coherent local communities under professional supervision, people are otherwise curating culture in public space within frameworks of spiritual and creative expression, place significance and identity. Employing primarily secondary sources, I address recent outdoor public curation practices in the West, and consider such deposits in relation to cultural-heritage management, a perspective in which they have hitherto been little addressed. Although these practices typically use accumulations of themed objects to achieve visibility and audience, I conclude that they are ultimately more focused on the individual than on the community, with linkages within and between them highly digitally enabled. Apparently intensified by the effects of recent COVID-19 travel lockdowns, the practices are also linked by their typical colonization of transit spaces (thereby accessing audiences who are also expected participants), by their conscious ephemerality (with deliberate innocence about end destinations of the objects used), and by their use of mundane consumer artefacts. All these features pose challenges to their management, and curated deposits are often contested or removed by official curators or managers of public space, even as the same entities appropriate similar tropes to engage customers. With resurgent interest in tangible culture and physical place following pandemic-era overloading in the virtual domain, with travel habits potentially using different routes, at altered times, and with use of social media continuing to grow, such activities may see increased participation. This analysis suggests that imaginative proactive official treatment of these curations (e.g. by municipal authorities, heritage site curators, rangers or other property owners/managers) could avoid conflict with creators and also help reduce enduring public ‘innocence’ about the disposability of consumer objects. Treatment could involve encouraging ongoing adaptation (digitally recorded and disseminated) of the curated objects in situ by their transitory public audiences.

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Section: Attachment To/operation In ‘Community’ Structuresmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%