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 is optional, but if you can, please bring an object from your life that feels like it is the most yours—something that you feel only you would choose to own or can understand the specialness of…
The workshop will occur at Villa Magdalena K. on 13 January 2023 beginning at 14:00 and will result in a very simple installation that will remain in the space through 14 January, with a closing event on the 14th at 17:00.
Please register for the workshop by Friday 12 January and send questions to: info@heatherkapplow.com
Deathbed Dreams is being 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.
Artist Bio
Kapplow does nothing.
But lots of other things as well.
Current interests include the intersection of dirt, time and queerness; intuition and its embodiment; socio-spatial dysphoria; loneliness and death; collectivity; and playful/creative/experimental modes of resistance to oppression, ordinariness, and other unnecessary hindrances to wonder-filled ways of being in the world.