This is the aftermath—a tracing of digital breadcrumbs, grief made physical and irrefutably present. It is my catharsis after feeling futile and disconnected, having become a stranger and a voyeur through the ritual of online mourning.
An ancient process has fundamentally changed: clicks lead you through fragments of a life lost; scrolling reveals the expressed grief of strangers, acquaintances, friends, and family. All words are leveled to an ostensibly benign sans serif font. A timeline is preserved, but life is without end or beginning in this reality. We are left detached, disembodied, and teetering.
Entangled in both the World Wide Web and a web of ivy, the messages fixed here are situated between the material and the virtual. On October 31, 2013 my cousin Sophia Glaser posted a Facebook status reading “pow pow the end.” She passed away suddenly just over a week later, on November 8, 2013. This is a monument to her, and to those of us who collectively mourn her.