Articles about "ritual"

EncArtes multimedia

Altars for the Dead: The Changing Heritage of a Mexican Tradition

https://youtu.be/prN7997stxs

  • Cristina Gutierrez Zuniga
  • Renée de la Torre Castellanos

The video is the result of an investigation into the effects, adaptations and displacements experienced by the Day of the Dead tradition in Mexico during the month of November of the first year of the covid-19 pandemic. By this time, public Day of the Dead ceremonies valued as intangible national heritage had been cancelled. We undertook an online survey to find out what would be the effects of isolation on the Day of the Dead tradition: would the tradition cease or would it shift or mutate to new uses, places and expressions? And what new creative uses of the tradition would emerge and in what new media would it be carried out? With the data obtained from 720 questionnaires and 280 photographs received from the altars of the dead, we made a video to explain the spatial displacements, the aesthetic changes and the new senses with which the practice of this ancestral Mexican tradition was renewed.