Restoring hope after death.
I am currently reading this book to help me prepare myself for when I eventually lose someone I love, especially a family member. I am a very emotionally attached person, and the thought of losing someone close to me, scares me immensely - I need to 'soften the blow' somehow; reading this book will allow me to this. It will enable me to understand the grieving process, how I should react and how it will be. This includes the five stages of grief: 1) Denial 2) Anger 3) Bargaining 4) Depression 5) Acceptance Viola is a pioneer of video art, and has been one of its most important practitioners for more than forty years. Characteristic qualities of his work, such as the interplay between movement and stasis, and the testing of the viewer’s perception through multiple sensations, have become recurring elements of the medium as a whole.
Tiny Deaths was made in 1993. Barely visible figures are perceived in the darkened space until crescendos of light and sound bring moments of drama. The three projections envelop the viewer in the intense experience of the appearance and sudden disappearance of these presences. ‘The struggle we are witnessing today is not between conflicting moral beliefs’, Viola observed in 1992. ‘It is between our inner and our outer lives, and our bodies are the area where this belief is being played out.’ His works of the 1990s consistently show the body as the site for physical transformations – often through immersion in light or water – that embody these profound concerns with transformation and mortality. While Tiny Deaths opens up broad possibilities around the meaning and transience of existence, Viola’s recent works address spiritual themes more directly. http://www.tate.org.uk/whats-on/tate-modern/display/bill-viola ‘A Thousand Years’ and 'A Hundred Years’ were first exhibited at the warehouse exhibition ‘Gambler’, in 1990. ‘A Thousand Years’ is acknowledged by the artist to be one of the most important of his career.
In both works, the vitrine is split in half by a glass wall: a hole in this partition allows newly hatched flies from a box in one half to fly into the other where an Insect-O-Cutor hangs. The corpses of the flies inside the vitrine accumulate whilst the works are on exhibition. In ‘A Thousand Years’, a decaying cow’s head is presented beneath the fly-killer. Hirst describes how, having come round to the idea of the validity of “new art” and having made the spot paintings and the ‘Medicine Cabinets’, he felt he had lost something, “in terms of the belief I had in whether [art] was real or not.” Feeling the need to make “something about something important”, and having already worked with flies, maggots and butterflies, whilst at Goldsmiths, he decided to create a “life cycle in a box.” The structure was partially inspired by American minimalism and the industrial materials Hirst had seen in the work of Grenville Davey and Tony Cragg. The shape of the vitrine drew from Francis Bacon’s technique of framing his figures within box shapes. Of the influence of Bacon’s frames to his work. Hirst has explained: “it’s a doorway, it’s a window; it’s two-dimensional, it’s three-dimensional; he’s thinking about the glass reflecting.” http://www.damienhirst.com/a-hundred-years Question - Q Answer – A
Q – Do you feel that the way that people cope with the loss of a loved one has changed in the past 20 years? A – Interesting question, some things have changed and some things haven’t and some things have remained the same. I think certainly there is a lot of information around, not so much has changed in the last 20 years, but even the last 50/60/70 years, even as far back as the Victorian era, death was very much out in the open. So there were rituals around that and everyone knew what to do after a death, and there was always a stable family support and friendship circle, whereas now there isn’t always that family support and friendship network. What we see here (counselling) is a lot of loneliness and not understanding what is happening to them. More information out there now and more ways to access that information but unless people are told about it and shown it they often don’t know it is there. A lot of work we do is to try and understand what they are going through but at the same time acknowledge that yes, it is painful, but it is a natural occurrence/ process. How people cope – there is a lot more complications within families these days and these ongoing issues throughout life and then having a death on top of that, can be the tip of the iceberg for most people. I don’t think there’s a lot of understanding around the bereavement that this is going to be more than just a few days. Q – Do you deal with the funeral planning? If so, why do you think there has been a shift from burial to cremation? A – I don’t personally deal with funeral planning, but I spoke to them and they believe there has certainly been a shift, especially because cremation is a lot cheaper than burial, and because of lack of space and in the last 10/20 years, part of the catholic religion was to be buried which has slowly become irrelevant in British society. Q – Do you think death should be spoken about more in our everyday lives to help us prepare for when we lose someone? A – It is good to have those conversations but there are still those huge taboos around it. When someone is having treatment, it is terrible to think about someone dying and not getting better, so people tend to focus on the treatment the ill person is having and how it will make them better. When I worked in the hospice, people didn’t have these conversations until it was almost too late, so all the memory making, and things they wanted to do, don’t necessarily happen as they run out of time. There’s a question we ask ourselves in training is how often we think about our own death, and most people’s reaction is to say “oh no, I don’t think about that” whereas others actually do think about it. Especially when you’re younger, it is not something you think about as you have never experienced it, it’s only when something happens with family or friends that people realise that there is no certainty in this life. Some schools talk about death, but in my experiences at schools it almost gets skipped over even though it is part of the life cycle, mostly because teachers have had their own experiences and become wary when talking about it, whereas the children find it really thought provoking and enjoy it. I think as well, having pets, is almost like having a dress rehearsal for the real thing, which can be a good experience in the sense that it is helping us prepare for the real event of a death of a loved one. Even if you have the best death possible, whatever that is, you are still going to have that grief reaction, and people don’t understand that that is part of the process and they won’t be happy for a while but that’s ok, and there is a constant need to be happy in our culture, so when we are unhappy and sad, we don’t like it, when in reality you can’t have one without the other. If someone never experienced sadness then how would they know they are truly happy as they have nothing to compare it against. Q – What are the stages of grief, why? A – There are many theorists and theories out there, which say the average grief time is around two years, but I don’t like to put a time on it as everyone is different in their grieving. There are phases and tasks of grief, everyone is different, and people may go back and forth and back and forth with their grieving process. Another interesting development, particularly in the last 20 years and less than that, is continuing bonds, when it first came out from the bereavement world to disarray really, in the past people were never allowed to speak about death, not mentioning memories, when they got sick or even the funeral, everything was kept to yourself. Whereas now it was very obvious of the continuous bonds, for example people talk about things that remind you of the deceased, such as saying “your smile looks just like grandad”, there shouldn’t be this cut off at an end of someone’s life but having an appreciation of the life lost by having celebrations on the anniversary and memory making, death changes people, they will never be the same as they were before they lost that loved one. Q – Do you think the media has an impact on how we view death? A – Yes definitely, I think it can be really helpful at times, but other times possibly not that helpful, a big thing for us is the language that people use such as passing away and losing someone, specifically from the point of view for the children it can be very confusing for them as the language is always different and not always clear, when using terms like going to sleep, it then worries the children to think is this going to happen to me? Seeing big funerals on the TV can help a lot of people, especially when you look at Diana which was highly publicised, I think that would have helped dramatically with people connecting it with their own griefs. After pashendale, the government had to put a stop to national mourning as it made the country come to a stop, so I think that was the beginning to how Britain is known today, to have the stiff upper lip. Before this children died in larger groups which doesn’t happen now, people get hospitalised and I think death has just become a lot more sanitised. Q – Why do people need counselling about their bereavement, whilst others do not? A – I wouldn’t say that most people need it, because it is a natural process, but most of the people that come here come her for information or just need reassurance. Every single person is different, therefore each of the coping mechanisms when bereaving are different and it’s impossible to tell which person will have a certain reaction to death. You will find that even those who are surrounded by family and friends are still lonely and they don’t like to talk about their close company about it so they come here to find confidence with talking to someone who is outside their comfort circle and getting an outside circle. Grief is unique, even if I have grieved I cannot say that I know what they are feeling, you may have an idea but you will truly never know, because everyone is unique and we all feel differently so that’s a hard question to answer. Q – Do you feel people are more open to speak about death then they used to be or the other way around? A – I think it’s different for different people. There’s something about culture within families, and some families are really open about subjects such as death which then enables the whole family to be open, but then you get the families who don’t like talking about death and then the rest of the family know its forbidden and not to be spoken about, which is particularly hard, especially for children as they need to speak about that and express themselves. There definitely seems to be that fear of not speaking about it as if you do then it’s going to happen. Q – Why do you think that people are hospitalised rather than staying at home with the family? A – This is a good one, because there is actually a lot of research suggesting that people wish to actually die at home, or if not at home then in a hospice, but the trouble is even in the hospice there is a limited amount of space and only few beds to spare, but generally what happens is, something kicks off or there’s an medical emergency in the persons health that automatically means they have to be hospitalised. Ambulance medics are trained to take the patient to the hospital when they see something is wrong, which then makes the family members question that they should not be at home but in the hospital as that’s where they can remain alive. With medical advancements making the process of dying longer, it makes the decision of going into hospital easier on the family as they know they are in safe hands. Q – My course at university is Fine Art, do you think certain artworks about death can help people contemplate/ come to terms with death? A – I think yes, I can’t name artworks but I know people find them really helpful. We use pictures here quite a lot and often the image helps the patient come out with their emotions and what they are feeling a lot more than without one. People tend to go to a deeper level much quicker when using imagery and therefore we find it a lot easier when talking to them, if they pick a certain image we can then go from there and it makes the whole counselling process a lot easier. People see different things in artwork and not all the same and it gives them hope in a sense that there is other things out there and you can move forward with your life. Q – Why do you think people, specifically in western society/UK fear death so much? A – There’s this whole idea around that most things we can fix, that we have this instant society. But death is not in our face as people are away they are in hospital, and taken away and not at home. Whereas other cultures are very different, their loved ones will die at home, they will often see the dead body and the casket will be open, and as a culture they are just more open about their feelings. I think that because we have moved away from religion and its come out of the mainstream it has left it open and it’s all unknown and indefinite. Also here we have a lot more humanist funerals and associations to fill in for not having a religion. I think it is one of the last taboos, which we can only do so much about as if someone’s going to die than they are going to die and there’s nothing you can do about it. Also in society people expect you to work even though you are ill and we are just not accepting of people not being ok as they don’t know how to handle it; if they aren’t going through it themselves then they don’t want to hear about it. Q – Why do people, in your opinion, see talking about death as a taboo? A – There are things that we just don’t do, we don’t speak of the dead, and if you speak about something then it is going to happen. People aren’t reliant on themselves of having knowledge to cope and deal with the loss of a loved one which is why they go to people that do know what they’re are talking about and know what to do with the deceased as its almost taking that responsibility away from themselves so they don’t have to deal with death by themselves, and this way it’s a weight off their shoulders. http://samtaylorjohnson.com/moving-image/art In Taylor-Johnson's words, 'It was interesting in one way to take the idea (of Still Life) one step further by bringing in an animal, and also, that animal specifically, the hare in history, is the symbol of life and virility as well. So it was sort of about looking at that and having the stillness of looking at that. I guess I didn't quite know what to expect when I was filming it, and then when I put it in front of me as it were, so many things were surprising to me. One of the things I loved about it was how different it was from Still Life, but also made it come alive again. The deathly heavy scenario came to life again, and then it evolved into a sort of slasher horror film version ofStill Life. A Little Death was more violent. Still Lifeconveyed a grace in the decay but with A Little Death it was not only violent, but shockingly violent. The feeling of the transformation of life into death repeating itself over and over is so frightful, and after those two works I sort of left the topic alone. I felt like I had achieved what I set out to convey.'
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Ellen HardyThis blog will outline my ongoing external research throughout my second&third year at university. ArchivesCategories |