The hopes of memorial remaking: Product, process, and the temporal rhythms of making

Abstract

The individual and social therapeutic benefits of spending time making have received both popular and academic endorsement. These testimonials often promote the sentiment that the benefits of making are experienced in the doing rather than what is made. In particular, making is recognised for providing alternative temporal experiences to the incessant pace of global capitalism. In this paper I unpick this bias towards the processes over the products of making in an autoethnographic study of memorial remaking. This practice involved making items for family members from my father's clothing in 2020/21 following his death at the start of the COVID-19 pandemic. Inspired by William Morris's writing on the hopes of work, I reflect on the assumed value of process over product and reassess this binary with reference to time. In Morris's original formulation time is expressed through the hope of rest, which I suggest can be reworked into rhythm. Through re-engaging with the hopes of making in my own practice of memorial remaking, I reflect how changing the temporal dimension from rest to rhythm is more in tune with a relational approach to creativity rather than confining making to responsibilities that are bounded by time and space. Memorial remaking provides a way of fabricating how memories, intimacies, emotions and responsibilities are interwoven into the experiences of grief, through making items that resonate with individuals in time and space. Thus, this paper also unpicks how experiences of grief consolidate normative codes of moving on and individual endeavour to craft one's journey through this process.