Rutger Huibert. Ekklisakia, Greece, 2010
Evangelos Kotsioris and Rutger Huiberts, Rutger studying architecture at TU Delft, and Evangelos at the GSD, sent their survey of roadside eikonostasia in Greece for On Site 23: small things. These are little shrines placed where someone has died in a traffic accident and Huiberts and Kotsioris talk about the transition from hand-made to manufactured shrines.
We have roadside memorials here in Canada, in increasing numbers: mostly bunches and garlands of plastic and silk flowers tied to crosses, or telephone poles, littered with stuffed toys and scraps of paper – unruly, angry, sad, unresolved. We didn't always do this. I remember the first time I saw a roadside memorial when I drove to Kansas in the mid 80s: crossed the border into the States and there they were. Had I ever seen one in Canada I would have taken them for granted, but I'd never seen such a thing before.
As Huiberts and Kotsioris point out, they also act as road warnings. In Montana, again in the 80s – don't know if they still do this– highway fatalities were officially marked by small white metal crosses: not memorials, just markers. On the famous and very beautiful Going to the Sun Highway in Glacier Park every time you came around a sharp corner to find a fantastic view of yet more mountains, the foreground would have a flock of crosses where cars had taken the corner too quickly and someone had died. It was very sobering.
Roadside shrines and markers are now the subtext to travel by car — a dark chorus to the freedom of the road. Are our highway verges littered with wandering spirits consoling themselves with teddy bears and wreaths? I'm not sure about this – not the spirits, but the need for flowers and toys. I would hope that they have moved on.