Event type Workshop
november
Time
(Monday) 09:30 - 11:00(GMT+00:00) View in my time
Event Details
Tamsin Grainger: A Death Walk for Life WORKSHOP A deeply meditative group exploration on death and life, to galvanise the community in
Event Details
Tamsin Grainger: A Death Walk for Life
WORKSHOP
A deeply meditative group exploration on death and life, to galvanise the community in embodied action using Medieval and Japanese rite. This is an open experiment focused on our imminent demise. It engages each individual, on their own home turf, offering the chance to allow sensation, experience and thought to arise. Happening in a directed context with prompts from the facilitator, the results will be curated and disseminated both to the individuals and on a shared platform for the understanding, healing and future of those individuals, the community, the land and the wider universe.
Speakers for this event
-
Tamsin Grainger
Tamsin Grainger
Tamsin is a Shiatsu practitioner with a walking practice. She is the author of Death and Loss in Shiatsu Practice (Singing Dragon:2020) and a Death Café host. She has experience in end-of-life hospice care, as an international teacher of bodywork, meditation, and chi gung in the area of death, loss and grief, and she has journeyed to Mont Saint Michel, barefoot across the sands of time. linktr.ee/tamsinshiatsu
Time
(Monday) 09:30 - 11:00(GMT+00:00) View in my time
Event Details
WORKSHOP Ultimology is the study of that which is dead or dying across a range of disciplines and contexts. Within the framework of the collaborative
Event Details
WORKSHOP
Ultimology is the study of that which is dead or dying across a range of disciplines and contexts. Within the framework of the collaborative project, the Department of Ultimology, curator Kate Strain and artist Fiona Hallinan have developed Ultimology as a curatorial strategy, initially based in Trinity College Dublin, organising workshops, events, rituals, a radio drama and a series of artistic commissions. Hallinan is currently undertaking a PhD research project at LUCA School of Arts/KU Leuven in Ghent, Belgium that will explore how Ultimology could be developed as a concept for transformative discourse in an educational context. The Department of Ultimology proposes that close examination of that which is dead or dying offers an entry point into processes of change in diverse areas including technological progress, environmental change and knowledge production. Our research takes place through individual interviews, live questionnaire filling events, hands-on workshops and a monthly reading group hosted by Fiona Hallinan entitled On Death, a gathering (currently held online) with a goal of elaborating an understanding of the conceptual and metaphorical dimensions of death.
In previous projects we have used Ultimology as a way of gaining insight into the work of engineers working in network technology through a residency at CONNECT Research Centre for Future Networks, investigated cultural tradition in Styria in Austria as part of a research project in the Grazer Kunstverein for the steirischer herbst festival of performance and art, and as a theme for a cross disciplinary exhibition and conference at the Trinity Long Room Hub. As a contribution to Borrowed Time, Fiona Hallinan will introduce a small group of participants to the practice of Ultimology through a lecture accompanying an instructional workshop on the process of making hand soap. The presentation will introduce and discuss the development of the project of Ultimology and our findings, with a particular focus on our investigation of dying practices in the context of the University, technology and obsolescence.
Throughout the process of making soap, we will explore themes of order, care, degradation, waste, tactility and maintenance which have emerged in our research in death and dying, and make reference to the work of artists such as Mierle Laderman Ukeles, whose self-initiated residency with the New York Sanitation Department sought ‘to counter the garbagification of the object world and to force still earthly humans to construct a different relationship to material’ (Jackson, Shannon, Social Works, Routledge 2011). This workshop and talk will be developed with the expectation that it may need to be hosted online, allowing individuals to participate from any location. In this case in advance of the workshop, a list of materials required and potential sources for these will be distributed to prospective participants. Multiple methods of casting and adding material to the soap will be offered as part of the workshop, and Hallinan will draw on her own artistic practice and use of soap as a material in recent projects.
Speakers for this event
-
Fiona Hallinan
Fiona Hallinan
I am an artist, researcher and co-founder of the Department of Ultimology, based in Brussels, Belgium. I am currently a doctoral candidate at LUCA School of Arts/KU Leuven, and part of the Orthogonal Methods Group based at CONNECT, Trinity College Dublin. My artistic work is often project based and collaborative, with outcomes including installation, writing and events. I am interested in thresholds, gestures of hospitality, embodied knowledge and instigating uncanny encounters between individuals and things. My work has been shown at Kerlin Gallery, IMMA, Mother’s Tankstation and Brown University.
Time
(Monday) 14:30 - 16:00(GMT+00:00) View in my time
Event Details
WORKSHOP The Scene Reveals: a film scene linked to the deceased workshop format: I’ll show a clip from “Oklahoma!” (1955, dir. Zinnemann,
Event Details
WORKSHOP
The Scene Reveals: a film scene linked to the deceased
workshop format: I’ll show a clip from “Oklahoma!” (1955, dir. Zinnemann, with Shirley Jones, Rod Steiger, Gordon MacRae), the film my brother chose to watch on his last night on Earth. I’ll share what in that scene is connected to my brother’s life-while-dying from Amyotropic Lateral Sclerosis. In turn, each participant will be invited to show a film clip of their choice (up to 5 minutes), then share the connection between the scene and the deceased—A film the deceased loved? A scene that reveals tensions or decisions for a vulnerable person? A moment of hilarity or absurdity, during a fraught time? We’ll take time for closing observations, as well. Note: Each participant should be prepared to share screen with their film clip.
background: My brother would watch a film every day of the final year of his life at 5 ‘o clock sharp. Unwilling to die without having re-read favorite novels and without having viewed again favorite or classic films, i.e. The Maltese Falcon (noir), West Side Story (musical), or It’s a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World (comedy), he wanted others to watch with him. His rules: No talking, no breaks. Complete immersion in the film.
As I continue to feel, grieve, think, write, publish, teach, and to live during our Earth’s climate change and the pandemic linked to it, I understand Carroll’s dying and death increasingly through the film genre, especially the scene unit. Scenes from his death months often flash into mind, unbidden visitations —scenes from films we viewed together as well as scenes from his actual life as compromised by the disease.
Speakers for this event
-
Rebekah Bloyd
Rebekah Bloyd
California College of the Arts
I'm a writer, maker, professor, family member. My father was a minister, my mother a social worker. I grew up in a small town that featured death by farm accident and gun accidents. I have cared for several close relative during their dying process and in the moment of death: my father, my mother, my aunt, my mother-in-law, my brother Carroll. Death, dying, and illness have been part of my life since childhood, but to be with my brother as he legally ended his own life was like nothing I'd experienced. background: In April 2018, my brother Carroll ended his life after three years of living with the neuron degenerative disease amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS), as it is known in the U.S., or, motor neuron disease (MND), as it is known in the United Kingdom. With family and partner present, under the auspices of the Death with Dignity Act in Washington State, he legally ended his life by taking a cocktail of medication. The prognosis for sporadic, spinal onset ALS is three to five years, with muscle atrophy, loss of motor skills, insomnia, and paralysis on the road to death. Carroll's partner, son, and three siblings, myself included, were with him through the months of his decline and at his chosen end-of-life time. During the final months, in Carroll's home of Spokane, Washington, raging forest fires of our climate-changed world made the air ash- filled, grey, unsafe for breathing.
California College of the Arts
Time
(Monday) 14:30 - 16:00(GMT+00:00) View in my time
Event Details
Deborah Kelley & Clare Whistler: Asclepian Dreaming for a Dying Earth WORKSHOP + special session Drawing on principles of Asclepian healing temples,
Event Details
Deborah Kelley & Clare Whistler: Asclepian Dreaming for a Dying Earth
WORKSHOP + special session
Drawing on principles of Asclepian healing temples, we would like to offer two experiential workshops, incorporating bodywork, embodied imagination, ritual and nature: one in the evening, followed by an invitation to attend to dreams overnight, and one the following morning, to respond to this dreaming. Having run Asclepian inspired groupwork for people facing death over last 20 years, we will invite participants to imagine themselves as the dying earth, visiting the ‘Asclepian temples’ and preparing for a healing dream.
This slot is the main workshop slot. Please note that there is a follow-up slot the next morning (Tues Nov 2) at 09.15 to 10.15 GMT
Speakers for this event
-
Clare Whistler
Clare Whistler
Poet
Clare Whistler makes work in performance, site-specific work in the landscape, poetry, music and visual art. Her international career as a dancer, choreographer and director has included fifteen years working in opera and education and community projects. She has been artist in residence at many locations, including The Library of Water, Iceland, Banff in Canada, and at the Centre of the History of Emotions, Queen Mary University, London (Leverhulme), where she produced her Tear Treasury. With visual artist Charlotte Still Clare is the creator/collaborator of WATERWEEK an annual event based in the Pevensey Levels in East Sussex. She is a member of the Cuckmere & Pevensey Levels Catchment Partnership for water management. She also teaches on local creative writing courses, and on the liberal arts programme at Stanford University. Co- founded Elephant - A small press, with long term collaborator designer Raphael Whittle. Recent publications include Poemish & Other Languages (2019, co-editor with Kay Syrad), Gifts (2017), with poems in Envoi, Poems for a Liminal Age, (ed. M. Pannett) and prose in Dark Mountain, ‘Techne’ Edition. Clare co-runs eco-poetics courses with Kay Syrad
Poet
-
Deborah Kelly
Deborah Kelly
Psychotherapist and teacher
Our Bios: Dr. Deborah Kelly (D Pysch) is a UKCP Integrative Arts Psychotherapist, teacher and supervisor. Deborah has worked in and with nature and imagination for the past 20 years, running groups with a number of foci including palliative care, bereavement, shiatsu and women’s groups. She set up and facilitates two palliative care projects, working with nature, myth and the rhythm of the seasons, which have been running for 20 years, and which have been the subject of her research and published works. She runs a private practice in East Sussex and teaches in London. Clare makes work in performance, site-specific work in the landscape, poetry, music and visual art. Her international career as a dancer, choreographer and director has included fifteen years working in opera and education and community projects. She has been artist in residence at many locations, including The Library of Water, Iceland, Banff in Canada, and at the Centre of the History of Emotions, Queen Mary University, London (Leverhulme), where she produced her Tear Treasury.
Psychotherapist and teacher
Time
(Monday) 14:30 - 16:00(GMT+00:00) View in my time
Event Details
Bethan Michael-Fox: Writing, Death and the Self WORKSHOP Writing is a profoundly social activity; it connects my thoughts to yours. Les
Event Details
Bethan Michael-Fox: Writing, Death and the Self
WORKSHOP
Writing is a profoundly social activity; it connects my thoughts to yours.
Les Back
Writers believe in the patterns their words make, which they hope and trust add up to ideas, to stories, to truths.
Julian Barnes
We should have the luxury of telling our stories, all our stories.
Ta-Nehisi Coates
I do think constantly of death, my death, the only one I’ll have.
Jenny Diski
This 90-minute session offers participants the opportunity to reflect on the themes of the conference, taking time to think, discuss and write in a collaborative space. Those attending will undertake a range of facilitated writing activities and produce a short piece of creative writing of their own.
The workshop is grounded in the concept of autothanatography, or what might be more simply termed self-death- writing. Though the term autothanatography is contested it has come to be associated with writing about death and the self that deviates from more traditional autobiographical endeavours. It explicitly engages with and reflects on impossibility – after all, how can you write about your own death? Yet those attending this conference likely engage with writing about death – our own, the deaths of loved ones, the death of the ‘other’, the death of the planet, social death, the death of the ‘self’ and much more – on a regular basis. In his novel Flaubert’s Parrot (1984) Julian Barnes writes: ‘Books make sense of life. The only problem is that the lives they make sense of are other people’s lives, never your own.’
When we write about our own lives and stories we perhaps utilise the writing process as a way to ‘make sense’ of life and death both for ourselves and others. This session will offer a range of stimuli and examples of arguably autothanatographical writing by authors including Julian Barnes, Jenny Diski and Ta-Nehisi Coates and encourage participants to reflect on the ways in which their own writing processes (academic, creative, day-to-day) function to ‘make sense’, or fail to ‘make sense’, of death. The session gives you an opportunity to leave with a piece of writing you have generated.
Speakers for this event
-
Dr Bethan Michael-Fox
Dr Bethan Michael-Fox
I work as an Associate Lecturer for the Open University, teaching a range of English literature, creative writing, interdisciplinary humanities and reflective learning modules. I am an Honorary Associate of the Open University’s School of English and Creative Writing and a member of the Open Thanatology research group. I was a lecturer and senior lecturer at the School of Education and English Language at the University of Bedfordshire from 2011-2018. I have published creative writing with Parthian and I regularly publish academic work, including autoethnographic video as well as more traditional outputs online and in print. I am interested in critical and cultural theory and collaborative and interdisciplinary research, am a Senior Fellow of the HEA and a Fellow of the RSA. I am a council member for the Association for the Study of Death and Society. Please feel welcome to connect on Twitter: @bethmichaelfox or LinkedIn or check out my website www.drbethanmichaelfox.com
Time
(Monday) 16:15 - 17:45(GMT+00:00) View in my time
Event Details
Joanna Lilley: Hearing Voices: words of extinction WORKSHOP Hearing voices: words of extinction A workshop with Joanna Lilley Is there a way
Event Details
Joanna Lilley: Hearing Voices: words of extinction
WORKSHOP
Hearing voices: words of extinction A workshop with Joanna Lilley Is there a way to hear the voices of extinct species and put them on the page? Do you wonder what our fellow creatures would say if we were all able to communicate in the same language? Come to this workshop and bring with you a nonhuman guest of your choice from any eon who no longer exists. Sit, crouch, lie or hover beside them and listen to what they have to say, whether whisper or bellow. Test each of your senses to connect with beings with whom we once shared the planet or who preceded our existence – and perhaps even tune into elements of your own existence you’ve never had a chance to fully explore. Beginners and experienced writers and word artists are all welcome. As part of this workshop, Joanna will share a selection of poems to illustrate some of the approaches she took to connecting with extinct animals for her 2020 poetry collection, Endlings from imagining what the dusty bones of a dodo in a museum might say and perceiving a great auk subculture to reporting on the story of how the very last Labrador duck was shot and travelling back to a planet on which Homo sapiens had yet to exist.
While I am personally a page writer I encourage word artists of all kinds to take part.
Speakers for this event
-
Joanna Lilley
Joanna Lilley
I'm greatly preoccupied by how we live alongside our fellow species in this world as well as those who no longer exist in body. While I try to bear witness I have never been able to work out how to deal with the harm that humans inflict on nonhuman animals. I am also very mindful that humans are a recent development in evolutionary terms and yearn to be able to connect with, honour and learn from species who existed long before we did. I'm also very passionate about sharing the joy of words with other readers and writers and love giving workshops and connecting in that way. I'm wondering if my response to this question in an interview I gave with my publisher might be helpful int he context of the borrowed-time initiative and my experience with loss and grief: 1. This collection must have been very difficult to write, given the heartbreaking nature of extinction and the knowledge that humans have played a direct role in the loss of so many species. What strategies did you use to cope with the feelings that resulted from writing this collection? Yes, it was a difficult collection to write but it also felt necessary to write it. It helped me delve into and examine my lifelong worry about animals. I’ve never understood why as a species we are capable of causing other animals so much suffering or why so many people forget we are animals too. So in a sense the collection itself was a strategy for creating something out of all that concern and preoccupation, as well as dealing with the knowledge that humans have caused demise of so many species. My intention in writing Endlings was very much to honour, acknowledge and celebrate animals that are no longer with us. It sounds fanciful and even grandiose, I know, but I wanted to somehow connect with them across history and try to listen to their voices and translate what they were saying into human language. It was a heartbreaking project but it became such a privilege to spend time with each creature and learn about them and try to imagine what their lives and consciousness were like. There was perhaps an unintended strategy at play as well. I didn’t of course know it would happen but while I was writing the poems in Endlings I went through four bereavements as well as almost losing my father. My dog died, then seven months after that my sister, then seven months after that my mother, then five months after that my cat. I know it might not seem right to some people to include a dog and a cat in same list as a sister and mother and part of me wants to justify that by pointing out that I don’t have children. But regardless of differing opinions about what a proper hierarchy of grief should be, losing my animal friends broke my heart. All this accumulated, personal loss became, I think, an underlying emotion or undercurrent in the collection, even though my original, impossible wish was to try to step out of human experience and let the animals speak for themselves. (The above interview is at: https://www.turnstonepress.com/bird-on-a-wire/quatrain-questions-with-joanna-lilley.html) I'll also include my more formal biography in case that's of interest: Author Joanna Lilley’s latest collection of poetry, Endlings, is all about extinction and was published in 2020 by Turnstone Press in Canada. Joanna’s other poetry collections are If There Were Roads (Turnstone Press) and The Fleece Era (Brick Books) which was nominated for the Fred Cogswell Award for Excellence in Poetry. She’s also the author of a novel, Worry Stones (Ronsdale Press), which was longlisted for the Caledonia Novel Award, and a short story collection, The Birthday Books (Hagios Press). Joanna has given readings all across Canada and in the US and the UK and has delivered workshops as far afield as Alaska and Iceland. Her essay, ‘Do We Have the Right to Write About Animals’, was published in Writing for Animals (Ashland Creek Press) in the US in 2018. She has a Master’s Degree in Creative Writing from the Universities of Glasgow and Strathclyde and is a Humber School for Writers graduate. Joanna is from Britain and moved to Canada in 2006, 15 years after cycling alone across the country from Nova Scotia to Inuvik in the Northwest Territories. She lives in Whitehorse, Yukon, where she co-founded the Yukon Writers’ Collective Ink, and is grateful to reside on the Traditional Territories of the Kwanlin Dün First Nation and the Ta'an Kwäch'än Council.
Time
(Monday) 19:00 - 20:15(GMT+00:00) View in my time
Event Details
Anna Ledgard: A small group listening Circle to share thoughts and feelings about death and dying WORKSHOP An open ‘held’ space for
Event Details
Anna Ledgard: A small group listening Circle to share thoughts and feelings about death and dying
WORKSHOP
An open ‘held’ space for talking about our own experiences of death & dying.
Booking is required as numbers are limited to 6. (Booking coming soon)
This is a chance to reflect on and share thoughts and feelings about death and dying in a small group (maximum 6). The group will be carefully facilitated and is designed to give everyone equal time to make their contribution so that we are practising both listening and being heard.
Speakers for this event
-
Anna Ledgard
Anna Ledgard
I am a teacher, arts producer and end of life doula and doula trainer (www.lwdwtraining.uk) building understanding & confidence in talking about & planning for death & dying. I spent 30 years facilitating creative arts collaborations with artists in schools and NHS hospitals, latterly in intensive care or end of life settings.
Time
1 (Monday) 22:00 - 2 (Tuesday) 06:00(GMT+00:00) View in my time
Event Details
Elisabeth Laasonen Belgrano & Mark D. Price: Ornamentation in the Shadows of Death The form of the ‘vigil’ may seem strange outside of religious ritual
Event Details
Elisabeth Laasonen Belgrano & Mark D. Price: Ornamentation in the Shadows of Death
The form of the ‘vigil’ may seem strange outside of religious ritual or shows of socio-political solidarity. But to our way of thinking there is a paradoxically ‘urgent need for patience’ in any serious exploration of Death. A different approach is needed. Unlike the didactics of a lecture or conference paper, a research vigil involves remaining awake to other possibilities – awaiting whatever ‘other’ makes itself visible and audible in a dialogue irreducible to ‘active performers’ and a ‘passive audience’. We hope to negotiate with whatever necessary silences, free improvisations, and contrary responses the vigil might generate. Vital encounters can not be planned in advance. In this sense a vigil is the opposite of a ritual. With ritual there a profound over-determination of methods and what is expected as ‘the outcome’. This research is a night- journey and our hope is that the discipline of remaining patient and alert to nuances will allow an exploration of the liminal zones between knowledge and non-knowledge, voyage and destination, with songs and words and silences honoring both life and death.
On-line EXPO “VOICES of NOTHINGNESS” (from the Book of Lamentations, set to music by Michel Lambert 1610-1689): https://www.researchcatalogue.net/view/364135/738840
This will run approximately 22:00-06:00 and will include 9 intra-active lessons – one starting every hour. Duration for each lesson will depend on participants, but should not be longer than 40 min each one. You can come and go during the night but booking is required.
Speakers for this event
-
Dr Elisabeth Laasonen Belgrano
Dr Elisabeth Laasonen Belgrano
Dr. Elisabeth Laasonen Belgrano (voice artist/priest candidate/performance philosopher) allows her performance research to diffract through contemporary vocal studies & 17th century vocal music. She is a recipient of the Noah Greenberg Award from the American Musicological Society (2005); was awarded a PhD in Performance in Theatre and Music Drama for Performing Nothingness through Operatic Mad Scenes and Lamentations, Univ. of Gothenburg (2011); supervisor and examiner through ‘performative methodologies’; investigating the Art of (Vocal) Ornamentation as an intra-active research tool for measuring Nothingness and the Unknown. Currently on the track of becoming a deacon in the Church of Sweden, practicing pastoral care and existential counselling in palliative care. Dr. Belgrano’s artistic research portfolio: https://www.researchcatalogue.net/view/378762/430811
-
The Revd Dr Mark D Price
The Revd Dr Mark D Price
The Rev. Dr. Mark D Price is an independent researcher with interests in aesthetics, philosophy of religion, and political thought. He is a practising poet and musician. 2002 PhD (BIHE, Violence and Value in Post-Kantian Philosophy) 2016 PhD (MMU, Form and Force in Poesis and Apophenia) 2019 Language (ten poems set to music, see Mark D Price on bandcamp). 2017- 2020 Various public lectures for the Lenkiewicz Foundation and related charities.
Time
(Tuesday) 09:15 - 10:15(GMT+00:00) View in my time
Event Details
Deborah Kelley & Clare Whistler: Asclepian Dreaming for a Dying Earth Special session for Asclepian Dreaming workshop only. Drawing on principles of
Event Details
Deborah Kelley & Clare Whistler: Asclepian Dreaming for a Dying Earth
Special session for Asclepian Dreaming workshop only.
Drawing on principles of Asclepian healing temples, we would like to offer two experiential workshops, incorporating bodywork, embodied imagination, ritual and nature: one in the evening, followed by an invitation to attend to dreams overnight, and one the following morning, to respond to this dreaming. Having run Asclepian inspired groupwork for people facing death over last 20 years, we will invite participants to imagine themselves as the dying earth, visiting the ‘Asclepian temples’ and preparing for a healing dream.
This slot is the follow-on from the main workshop and is for workshop participants only.
Speakers for this event
-
Clare Whistler
Clare Whistler
Poet
Clare Whistler makes work in performance, site-specific work in the landscape, poetry, music and visual art. Her international career as a dancer, choreographer and director has included fifteen years working in opera and education and community projects. She has been artist in residence at many locations, including The Library of Water, Iceland, Banff in Canada, and at the Centre of the History of Emotions, Queen Mary University, London (Leverhulme), where she produced her Tear Treasury. With visual artist Charlotte Still Clare is the creator/collaborator of WATERWEEK an annual event based in the Pevensey Levels in East Sussex. She is a member of the Cuckmere & Pevensey Levels Catchment Partnership for water management. She also teaches on local creative writing courses, and on the liberal arts programme at Stanford University. Co- founded Elephant - A small press, with long term collaborator designer Raphael Whittle. Recent publications include Poemish & Other Languages (2019, co-editor with Kay Syrad), Gifts (2017), with poems in Envoi, Poems for a Liminal Age, (ed. M. Pannett) and prose in Dark Mountain, ‘Techne’ Edition. Clare co-runs eco-poetics courses with Kay Syrad
Poet
-
Deborah Kelly
Deborah Kelly
Psychotherapist and teacher
Our Bios: Dr. Deborah Kelly (D Pysch) is a UKCP Integrative Arts Psychotherapist, teacher and supervisor. Deborah has worked in and with nature and imagination for the past 20 years, running groups with a number of foci including palliative care, bereavement, shiatsu and women’s groups. She set up and facilitates two palliative care projects, working with nature, myth and the rhythm of the seasons, which have been running for 20 years, and which have been the subject of her research and published works. She runs a private practice in East Sussex and teaches in London. Clare makes work in performance, site-specific work in the landscape, poetry, music and visual art. Her international career as a dancer, choreographer and director has included fifteen years working in opera and education and community projects. She has been artist in residence at many locations, including The Library of Water, Iceland, Banff in Canada, and at the Centre of the History of Emotions, Queen Mary University, London (Leverhulme), where she produced her Tear Treasury.
Psychotherapist and teacher
