The Secret Life of Things

Material Culture

[secretlifeofthings]

another grave from the Melbourne General Cemetery. It's interesting to ponder, I think, why there is no date ("many years ago"), and why they've chosen to be so vague about who these babies were, who was responsible for these activities, and when this practice occurred. seems to perfectly illustrate the interplay between remembering and forgetting that memorials can produce.

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An interesting newspaper article published in Melbourne Punch on Thursday, July 28, 1870; pg. 26

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hairwork (jewellery or other items containing locks of dead people's hair) is a tradition unique to eighteenth- and nineteenth-century European mourning practices. modern hairwork, however, uses the material (hair) without the attached meaning (death) in a new configuration of remembrance. 

[secretlifeofthings]

It is only in the world of objects that we have time and space and selves.

T. S. Eliot, Knowledge and Experience in the Philosophy of F. H. Bradley.

[secretlifeofthings]

This letter was written by an Austrian woman to her student in Berlin on 29 July 1940. It is partly handwritten and partly typed. The writer gives details of their daily life in Austria under the Third Reich. Marked with crossed-out words and scented with the smell of ageing paper, this object takes you back to 1940.

#letter #historyletters #1940 #ThirdReich

[secretlifeofthings]

in Germany, to memorialise those who were deported and murdered during World War Two, stolpersteine are placed on the street by the entrance to the buildings where these people once lived. This is a grassroots memorial project (not organised by the government).

[secretlifeofthings]

Objects themselves may not be animated, but their relations have certainly animated many debates about the ways to understand society, culture and human lives.

Janet Hoskins, 'Agency, Biography and Objects', Handbook of Material Culture