Acknowledging Death

2014

The paper covers the symbolism of death, which seems to be largely overlooked, trivialized or narrowly read both by the public and by some authors of texts on contemporary aesthetics. Numerous artists of the 20 and 21 century, including those widely known and commented on, try to restore the theme of mortality to the culture of the West, often showing it in the form of intercultural symbols, present in art from the beginning of its documented existence. The aim of this essay is to summon some meanings of such symbols, which are in a comprehensive way traditional, but invariably attractive for contemporary artists and thus freely transformed, and to sketch the possibility of their potential existential impact. The exploration of the possible causes of these meanings has been conducted on the basis of the selected proposals of interpretation in visual anthropology and depth psychology. The symbolism of death and its alleged role in contemporary art and contemporary Western culture hav...

Tra materia e fine, 2022

In this text we would like briefly to explore some boundaries between art and spirituality, showing that the theme of death helps their mutual understanding and inspiration.This reflection will take up some themes from the philosophy of William Desmond,which at the end will be theologically contextualized by some ideas of Hans Urs von Balthasar and Watkins.We will focus on the interactional tension between the personal awareness of death and the conclusion, or rather the fulfillment, of a work of art.This delicate and important moment is crucial in understanding end perceiving aesthetic expression. By referring to a number of texts of different artists we will try to interpret this tension as a phenomenon which could eventually contribute to a new reception of the Easter event.

"If the reflection of death has grown more complex over the last centuries thanks to medical progress, the philosophical answers, from Plato to Jankelevitch, remain the same: metempsychosis, migration of the soul, after-life, nothingness…. And death still is what transforms every man on earth into a passive subject, a disabled victim of a sentence he cannot control. Death is what turns the being into the non-being, and the presence into absence. Then, how can the cinema show this non-existence on screen? How can this absence be represented trough a visual medium? If cinema, which capture time’s duration, can show someone dying or even stages it, death might seem to be the limit of illusion. Indeed, death is never visible as such; it is only perceptible via external signs to which death cannot be reduced. In this sense, therefore, the concept of death is based on a similar concept of invisibility to the one which composed the relation between vision and light. As the eye does not see literally the light but only the world enlightened by the beams of the sun, we do not see, so to speak, death. We only see a human being who is dying; we just observe the traces and effects of death on a body. This correlation between light and death is clearly showed in Ingmar Bergman’s movie, Cries and Whispers. This film tells the tragic story of three women waiting for a fourth woman to die although she doesn’t want to. In this film, the Swedish filmmaker seems to have found an abstract way of expressing death through light. The aim of our paper is to analyze the relations between light and death in Bergman's movie, to understand how light can help not only to define death but also to express the experience of dying."

Art Blart, 2018

This text investigates how the act of photography visually writes trauma. Through an analysis of the context of images of death by artists such as Alphonse Bertillon, Robert Capa, Alexander Gardner, Walker Evans the paper ponders how the camera captures human beings ante-mortem, at the death point, post-mortem and vita ad mortem. It seeks to understand that line between presence and absence where life was there… and now death is in its place. Death was one step removed, now it is present. How does the act and performance of photography depict the trauma of death, this double death (for the photograph is a memento mori and/or the person in the photograph may already know that they are going to die). "The text of eternity that the photograph proposes, imparts and imposes a paradoxical state of loss. The secret of telling truth in a photograph is that the more truthful, "the more orgasmic, the more pleasurable, the more suicidal" the pronouncement of the perfect paradox (you are dead but also alive) … then the more we are strangled while uttering it. The language of deferral in the writing of trauma in death and the image becomes the dissolve that seizes the subject in the midst of an eternal bliss. In death and the image we may actually die (be)coming." Word count: 8,137

2016

M.A Thesis Chapter, 2018

This short paper reflects on the attitudes that modern society has towards death, which affect and form the language that we use to describe death. The key domains of concern to the dying are described, as well as the patterns of social interactions. It explores how the visual arts can offer an alternate and cathartic form of communication of death, as shown by the patient experience with cancer. Ultimately, it encourages us to view medicine as an art, and also art as medicine.

2015

tension between the conscious and unconscious that underscores and emphasizes the novella's pivotal theme of anxiety-a tension that is also present in Zhukovsky' s painting. Each interacting with themes of absence, anxiety and aesthetics, together the articles in this issue illustrate how humankind devotes a considerable part of its cultural production to grappling with the end of life, through visual art, architecture, and literature. As a cross-cultural phenomenon, the end of human life fascinates us, scares us, and puzzles us, but never leaves us indifferent. We paint and photograph its victims, we write about its process, we detect patterns in the ways people meet the end of their existence, and produce lasting works of art in the process. Nonetheless, it continuously escapes our grasp, even if we actively seek to take hold of it. Death, with all the attempts to capture it in images, words, objects, or built structures, remains the great unknown. 8 | JOURNAL OF THE LUCAS GRADUATE CONFERENCE meskerken for this issue's layout design. A final word of thanks goes to Frans

In this project I explore the realities of grief through personal experiences and artistic practice. My research considers how remaining objects and memories of the deceased are interconnected and can be re-imagined as artworks to deepen commemoration. It also explores an acceptance of the inevitability of one’s own death, and considers impacts on loved ones still living. The result of this project is a moving image work and a collection of sculptures. I also propose the use of artificial grottoes as spaces that invite viewers to contemplate loss of life and confront their own mortality. Contextual research draws on the work of contemporary artists dealing with death. The video works of Sophie Calle and Araya Rasdjarmrearnsook are particularly discussed in relation to my moving image work, 1 million years. When recounting the death of my brother-in-law, I consider an installation work by Tracy Emin and reflect on a photographic series by Anne Noble. Sculptural works by Mike Kelley and Callum Morton are examined in relation to artificial grottoes as devotional spaces. My art practice has also been informed by Martin Heidegger’s philosophical notion of Dasein as a way of accepting all the possibilities in life, including death. Progressive discourse regarding death, including alternative funeral rites and ways of dying, is still in its infancy in Western societies. However, talking about death is increasingly becoming less taboo. Over the course of this project, a methodological opportunity for information sharing at Death Café events has been invaluable. While questioning societal concerns with death, this project acknowledges that the conversation currently rests in a transitional space anticipating further development. My final series of works, together with this exegesis, contributes to this conversation on death and memorial through the medium of visual art.

Funes. Journal of Narratives and Social Sciences, 2018

Death represents one of those few experiences that every society throughout history faces. It has been defined as the marginal situation par excellence (Berger, 1969). Since it cannot be known concretely, it exists at the margins of every symbolic system, of any solid structure of meaning that a society can possess. Conceiving one’s own mortality and coping with the death of loved ones bears a threat to the typical way of understanding and defining the social world. The awareness of death is difficult to handle, since it sheds light on the whole existence of those who must cope with it. Therefore, every group as well as every individual, faced with the end of human life, the loss and the mourning process, must also ask oneself about the sense and the meaning of death in order to face its scope.