We will all die someday.
Even though we don’t talk about it much, we think about it sometimes, and when we think about it, it is common for us to think about how we will be remembered in the world after we die. Will the people around us get it right? Will they understand what it is about us that is completely unique, can never be replicated, will never exist again once we are gone?
American artist Hey There Kapplow hosts an experimental workshop experience investigating the shape of the uncomfortable gap between how we feel ourselves being internally, and how our external environments and communities shape, categorize and articulate us.
The process will involve reflecting together on our own eventual deaths and the difficulty that memorial rituals pose for capturing the nuance of being and then ceasing to be. We will also stay aware of our historical context, thinking together about exactly what it means for every human life to matter—to have value.
Deathbed Dreams is artistic research for a later, collaborative, project called Getting Somewhere Important? that is about a kind of dysphoria that our social systems and the architectural features of our public spaces can produce in us (an idea inspired by gender dysphoria, the embodied dissonance associated with differences between experienced and externally perceived gender.)
For Deathbed Dreams, we will think together about each existing person’s complete uniqueness and value, and try to make a clear distinction between how we feel seen externally and how we feel we really are/wish we could be seen.
The workshop will take between 2 and 4 hours, depending on the number of people. Please dress comfortably for moving around and possibly getting your hands a bit dirty. It will also result in a simple participatory installation occurring the following day.
Deathbed Dreams is generously hosted by Villa Magdadelna K and the development of the idea has been supported by Goethe-Institute Boston, as well as by Hyper Cultural Passengers in Hamburg and ZK/U in Berlin.