FUNERAL EXPERIENCES

GRIEFBOOK

 

Griefbook is an art project about mourning. We have been inspired by the ritual forms of dealing with grief in different cultures, like funeral practices and the work professional mourners. Our aim is to give the audience a possibility to experience grief in the shared space of a performance. We feel that the art of performance is an ideal contemporary way to revisit, reform and revitalize the normalized forms of social rituals that structure our lives.

On May 14th 2016 we performed the first Funeral Experiences at International Cultural Center Caisa in Helsinki. It was the final event of the week-long OccupARTy, which was a multi-cultural art festival with immigrant artists from 20 different countries, working in 13 different languages. The course of Funeral Experiences below.

C H A P T E R   I   –   H E A R T

We prepared our minds for the funeral. Singing the Heart Sutra was aimed to let the mind settle in for the grief experience. The participants laid their personal grievances into the cremation vessel.

 

C H A P T E R   II   –   T R A N S F O R M A T I O N

We traveled in silence to the funeral site at the Botanical Garden and burned the bodies we have prepared.

 

C H A P T E R   III   –   M E M O R Y

In the memorial service there were drinks, pastries and speeches by the contemporary mourners. The celebration will ended with the sing-along Death is a Beautiful Thing.