Monday, 8 December 2008
Abstract
Losing a loved one is devastating and unfortunately friends and family of the deceased often have tendencies towards various degrees of self- destruction during the bereavement process.
As a designer, I am investigating the possibility of exploring design (at an object/system level) as a tool in overcoming bereavement. There are many areas for consideration that have risen in regards to this phenomenon. The main areas of investigation that are of primary interest are:
How to focus on a healthy future during a mourning period, which is primarily nostalgic?
During the Victorian era, wearing jewelry that was designed to represent a loved deceased, mirrored the lives and times of this particular culture. It was a souvenir to remember a loved one, a reminder to the living of the inevitability of death. But is it applicable in our days?
What is the relationship between an object and bereavement in our days, when our society tends to be more bound to digital and celebrates technology?
Social understanding of death and ways of dealing with death have changed dramatically and continually, though perhaps most drastically during the last century. One main characteristic of this change is that the idea of death often becomes a taboo and repressed, and subsequently mourning becomes a private affair. What is the consequence of this change? And when death becomes the center of attention, how could we support a loved one’s bereavement process to focus more on life?
If our understanding of death is more open, will it make bereavement more livable?
As a designer, I am investigating the possibility of exploring design (at an object/system level) as a tool in overcoming bereavement. There are many areas for consideration that have risen in regards to this phenomenon. The main areas of investigation that are of primary interest are:
How to focus on a healthy future during a mourning period, which is primarily nostalgic?
During the Victorian era, wearing jewelry that was designed to represent a loved deceased, mirrored the lives and times of this particular culture. It was a souvenir to remember a loved one, a reminder to the living of the inevitability of death. But is it applicable in our days?
What is the relationship between an object and bereavement in our days, when our society tends to be more bound to digital and celebrates technology?
Social understanding of death and ways of dealing with death have changed dramatically and continually, though perhaps most drastically during the last century. One main characteristic of this change is that the idea of death often becomes a taboo and repressed, and subsequently mourning becomes a private affair. What is the consequence of this change? And when death becomes the center of attention, how could we support a loved one’s bereavement process to focus more on life?
If our understanding of death is more open, will it make bereavement more livable?
Litterature review
Why is fear of death so prevalent in society?
The Concepts of Failure and Lose
In modern society, there are many perspectives, which correlate death with failure or defeat as opposed to linking it to a naturally occurring phenomenon.
French historian Phillippe Aries for example, suggests that cultural views of death have shifted from a position that death was omnipresent and its inevitability accepted, to a perspective he titles ‘forbidden death’ where death is seen as something almost shameful and not to be discussed. This shift in perspective happened quickly between 1930 and 1950, in part due to what we can consider as the displacement of death. The dying individual then submitted their power of decision to the doctor. “One no longer died at home in the bosom of one’s family, but in the hospital alone.” (Aries, p. 87). For several reasons, the social relationship to death shifted dramatically.
Aries comments coincide with the work of Swiss born psychiatrist Dr. Elisabeth Kübler-Ross, who would pioneer dialogues about issues and repricussions of death and dying. She did so from within the medical community becoming an advocate of the implications of none scientific practices linked to death, dying and bereavement. Perhaps she was best known for her theory of the five stages implicated in the dying process. According to Kübler-Ross these progressed through denial, anger, "bargaining for time," depression, and into a final state of acceptance. She criticised what she considered inhumane and neglectful treatment regarding patients with terminal illness and her struggles eventually saw her introduce the concept of the Hospice to the United States.
For London based artist Inventory this fear of death is the result of material consumption and mediated reality, which distances us from actual responses, feelings and even lived interactions. Invited to redesign traditional artefacts found in rituals related to Death, he intervened to with a black pvc body bag boasting a printed manifesto:
‘Our material world, the moraine of our existence, provokes nothing more than the profoundest disquiet. Supposing we were to make an inventory of everything we owned, all our possessions. What could this accumulated data say to us? – Nothing more than the extreme poverty of modern life. For all our constructions, our technologies, our material cultures attempt to mask our corporeal existence – our true materiality. Our flesh, our bones, our laughter and screams are our material condition, and no intellectual formulation, no technological construction or scientific data will bury this understanding indefinitely.’
'A deeper understanding of life – to exceed itself purposelessly. A life composed of so many perishable moments, both cruel and loving; for which there is nothing to be regretful or guilty. You could stand on the highest hilltop, trembling with anguish, shaking your fist at the heavens and what will it soothe for you? What can it assuage? – NOTHING. Therefore, this nothingness can only be willingly embraced. For as we drown in that dark and empty void, we refract back at ourselves, rendered in sharp detail, as much more than a mere shadow in a discontinuous landscape.'
'There will never be enough time; this is why we should cherish life, and why we fear death- because death completes us.’
The decline of mourning
British social anthropologist Geoffrey Gorer (1905-85) wrote an article on ‘the pornography of death’. His observation is based on the difference between cultural attitudes toward death in the Victorian era and in twentieth century. He points out that death has the same social function now that sex held in the 19th century. The principle thought being that in Victorian times death was discussed as openly as sex is today. This came as always after some struggle, and a century later had lost ground to conversations of new taboos.
This conscious or unconscious denial affects our way of grieving as well as the codes we use to express our mourning to others– from wearing black, armbands, mourning jewels to the very strict mourning codes, many of these rituals show trends towards extinction. If we are not expressing our grief, what might happen to it?
The question of hidden grief has stimulated much debate amongst psychoanalysts. Psychology Professor Harry W. Martin of Texas Southwestern Medical School, points out the danger of the decline in expression of grief, claiming that ‘slick, smooth operation of easing the corpse out, but saying no to weeping and wailing and expressing grief and loneliness. What effect does this have on us psychologically? It may means that we have to mourn covertly, by subterfuge – perhaps in various degrees of depression, perhaps in mad flights of activity, perhaps in booze.’
Mourning does not just happen inside of a person: it happens in the interaction between people.
The paradox is as we see death as a failure, grief as a sickness and sometimes embarrassment. Society is uncomfortable with death and avoids all kind of grief display. Added to this pressure is the organizational approach to go that often allows an employee less than one week to prepare the funeral and mourn the loss before returning to work.
This tendency pushed bereaved people to hide their emotions and act as they are ‘back to normal’ and as soon as possible…
How to express in this paradox?
It is the apparition of digital mourning. Online memorials and forums that focus on death become a comfort support for the bereaved. For example My Death Space aggreagates links to deceased My Space user’s pages, new stories, obituaries or blogs that detail their lives as well as how they died. As the internet becomes a bigger part of our lives, this is a natural evolution, but does it mean there is a lack of support/ interaction between the bereaved and his surrounding people?
Changing the way our culture mourns
Artist Felix Gonzalez- Torre’s translated his grief of his boy friend Ross into a concept of art work - Untitled (Loverboys- 1991). The installation is a pile of white and blue swirled candies which the size and weight represents the combined weights of the artist and his lover. At the same time it invites audience to take a piece of candy for their own until it disappeared completely.
‘I was losing the most important thing in my life – Ross, with whom I had the first real home, ever. So why not punish myself even more so that, in a way, the pain would be less? This is how I started letting the work go. Letting it just disappear.”
Gonzales’s work illustrate the compromise between private and public/ social (in his case is the audience), his grief becomes a sharing feeling for whom who interacted.
I see this compromise as the future way of mourning.
Bibliography
- Phillippe Aries – Essais sur l’histoire de la mort en Occident du Moyen Age a nos jours.- Editions du Seuil
- Dr. Elisabeth Kübler-Ross - http://www.elisabethkublerross.com/
- en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Elisabeth_Kübler-Ross
- Experimental Fomats & Packaging – Roto Vision
- Geoffrey Gorer ‘the pornography of death’
- Macmillan Encyclopedia of Death and Dying: Mourning
- Article - The New York Times – death in the west
- Article - The New York Times – on death as a constant companion
- Article - We make money not art – mourning and digital culture
- Binding to Another’s Wound: of Weddings and Witness – Chapter Author: Jane Blocker
The Concepts of Failure and Lose
In modern society, there are many perspectives, which correlate death with failure or defeat as opposed to linking it to a naturally occurring phenomenon.
French historian Phillippe Aries for example, suggests that cultural views of death have shifted from a position that death was omnipresent and its inevitability accepted, to a perspective he titles ‘forbidden death’ where death is seen as something almost shameful and not to be discussed. This shift in perspective happened quickly between 1930 and 1950, in part due to what we can consider as the displacement of death. The dying individual then submitted their power of decision to the doctor. “One no longer died at home in the bosom of one’s family, but in the hospital alone.” (Aries, p. 87). For several reasons, the social relationship to death shifted dramatically.
Aries comments coincide with the work of Swiss born psychiatrist Dr. Elisabeth Kübler-Ross, who would pioneer dialogues about issues and repricussions of death and dying. She did so from within the medical community becoming an advocate of the implications of none scientific practices linked to death, dying and bereavement. Perhaps she was best known for her theory of the five stages implicated in the dying process. According to Kübler-Ross these progressed through denial, anger, "bargaining for time," depression, and into a final state of acceptance. She criticised what she considered inhumane and neglectful treatment regarding patients with terminal illness and her struggles eventually saw her introduce the concept of the Hospice to the United States.
For London based artist Inventory this fear of death is the result of material consumption and mediated reality, which distances us from actual responses, feelings and even lived interactions. Invited to redesign traditional artefacts found in rituals related to Death, he intervened to with a black pvc body bag boasting a printed manifesto:
‘Our material world, the moraine of our existence, provokes nothing more than the profoundest disquiet. Supposing we were to make an inventory of everything we owned, all our possessions. What could this accumulated data say to us? – Nothing more than the extreme poverty of modern life. For all our constructions, our technologies, our material cultures attempt to mask our corporeal existence – our true materiality. Our flesh, our bones, our laughter and screams are our material condition, and no intellectual formulation, no technological construction or scientific data will bury this understanding indefinitely.’
'A deeper understanding of life – to exceed itself purposelessly. A life composed of so many perishable moments, both cruel and loving; for which there is nothing to be regretful or guilty. You could stand on the highest hilltop, trembling with anguish, shaking your fist at the heavens and what will it soothe for you? What can it assuage? – NOTHING. Therefore, this nothingness can only be willingly embraced. For as we drown in that dark and empty void, we refract back at ourselves, rendered in sharp detail, as much more than a mere shadow in a discontinuous landscape.'
'There will never be enough time; this is why we should cherish life, and why we fear death- because death completes us.’
The decline of mourning
British social anthropologist Geoffrey Gorer (1905-85) wrote an article on ‘the pornography of death’. His observation is based on the difference between cultural attitudes toward death in the Victorian era and in twentieth century. He points out that death has the same social function now that sex held in the 19th century. The principle thought being that in Victorian times death was discussed as openly as sex is today. This came as always after some struggle, and a century later had lost ground to conversations of new taboos.
This conscious or unconscious denial affects our way of grieving as well as the codes we use to express our mourning to others– from wearing black, armbands, mourning jewels to the very strict mourning codes, many of these rituals show trends towards extinction. If we are not expressing our grief, what might happen to it?
The question of hidden grief has stimulated much debate amongst psychoanalysts. Psychology Professor Harry W. Martin of Texas Southwestern Medical School, points out the danger of the decline in expression of grief, claiming that ‘slick, smooth operation of easing the corpse out, but saying no to weeping and wailing and expressing grief and loneliness. What effect does this have on us psychologically? It may means that we have to mourn covertly, by subterfuge – perhaps in various degrees of depression, perhaps in mad flights of activity, perhaps in booze.’
Mourning does not just happen inside of a person: it happens in the interaction between people.
The paradox is as we see death as a failure, grief as a sickness and sometimes embarrassment. Society is uncomfortable with death and avoids all kind of grief display. Added to this pressure is the organizational approach to go that often allows an employee less than one week to prepare the funeral and mourn the loss before returning to work.
This tendency pushed bereaved people to hide their emotions and act as they are ‘back to normal’ and as soon as possible…
How to express in this paradox?
It is the apparition of digital mourning. Online memorials and forums that focus on death become a comfort support for the bereaved. For example My Death Space aggreagates links to deceased My Space user’s pages, new stories, obituaries or blogs that detail their lives as well as how they died. As the internet becomes a bigger part of our lives, this is a natural evolution, but does it mean there is a lack of support/ interaction between the bereaved and his surrounding people?
Changing the way our culture mourns
Artist Felix Gonzalez- Torre’s translated his grief of his boy friend Ross into a concept of art work - Untitled (Loverboys- 1991). The installation is a pile of white and blue swirled candies which the size and weight represents the combined weights of the artist and his lover. At the same time it invites audience to take a piece of candy for their own until it disappeared completely.
‘I was losing the most important thing in my life – Ross, with whom I had the first real home, ever. So why not punish myself even more so that, in a way, the pain would be less? This is how I started letting the work go. Letting it just disappear.”
Gonzales’s work illustrate the compromise between private and public/ social (in his case is the audience), his grief becomes a sharing feeling for whom who interacted.
I see this compromise as the future way of mourning.
Bibliography
- Phillippe Aries – Essais sur l’histoire de la mort en Occident du Moyen Age a nos jours.- Editions du Seuil
- Dr. Elisabeth Kübler-Ross - http://www.elisabethkublerross.com/
- en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Elisabeth_Kübler-Ross
- Experimental Fomats & Packaging – Roto Vision
- Geoffrey Gorer ‘the pornography of death’
- Macmillan Encyclopedia of Death and Dying: Mourning
- Article - The New York Times – death in the west
- Article - The New York Times – on death as a constant companion
- Article - We make money not art – mourning and digital culture
- Binding to Another’s Wound: of Weddings and Witness – Chapter Author: Jane Blocker
People research report
The outcome of this work is clearly dependent on a process.
It is not an experiment. It is not a fiction. It does not exist between a tester and a user. It is a cut and paste exchange of a recent personal communication
‘Just want to say I'm with you. If you want to talk, give me a sign. I'll call you.’
My Dearest Winnie,
Sorry it took me so long to reply your message. You're truly an angel and I thank you deeply for your support. Things have been intensive and I am both mentally and physically exhausted from going back and forth to the hospital and at the same time worry about my work in school. I haven't been this stressful in my life. Fortunately my mother is doing well and she is stable. The nurses and doctors are great and they are supportive. All of them claimed my mother as a tough woman and she is going to make it through. It is great to see my mother being able to open her eyes and communicate via pen and paper. She regains her strength as day goes by. She is going to undergo an operation tonight to close up her wound. it is a small operation and things are going to be great. I am beginning to feel much more hopeful everyday passes and I am very thankful that the family all came together in this time of crisis. I really wish you could be here with me. You're first person I thought of when things with mom was turning to the worst. I am sorry to hear that your bf is in the hospital. I hope he is doing well. Please give him my regards. Hows your studying going? Most importantly how are you? These are stressful times and I hope you are taking good care of yourself. That is it for now. Unfortunately I still have many other things to do and Uncle John is nagging me for the computer to check his email....=P
Anyways, I will talk to you later. =]
Miss you & Love you~
XOXOXOMicky a.k.a. Small Small
Support – An example is only ever an example, but this one organically supported the ideas I was working through and emphasizes how important support and love are to the duress of death, in its approach, happening and survival. Love can here be compared with medication. It is a crucial ingredient to well being while trying to comprehend such an emotionally charged and ambiguous universal process.
The internet post of Turkish
Hello, everybody…
I wasn’t quite sure where to post this, so I decide to post it here. Half a year ago I lost my father due to stroke. The real pain here is that he was thought to recover from it, and my family and I were enthusiastic about his return from the hospital as he was getting better. So, two days before his scheduled return home, he suddenly passed away… But the horror did not end here; two weeks after the funeral, me and my mom returned home from the cemetery only to see that my older brother has shot himself…
I am not really the communicative type and it is pretty hard for me to squeeze these lines out. But I am having problems living a normal life after these incidents: I am full of anger and hatred, relying on alcohol for relief more and more often. You know, these deaths really made me realize how ingnorant people are because some of them would even stop talking to me as if I have ‘the touch of death’ or something, or would say some senseless BS like ‘it is fate’ or ‘you have to remain tough’… It is clear to me that they have nothing quite like this in their prefect little lives and really have no idea what they are talking about, so I decided to post here. Besides the only person I can talk it over with is my mother, but I prefer not to because she probably feels way worse than me.
The thing is that I have real trouble getting it together, it is hard for me to get up in the morning, it seems impossible for me to get a job because I am overly aggressive, and I have a problem with communicating to people because I am no longer the same me. So if anyone had a similar situation, or would have some suggestions on how to get one’s life back on track after something like this, I will greately appreciate it.
Turkish.
Digital Communication with Strangers...
Online bereavement support, memorial web sites becomes the more than more popular and fast growing phenomena. This new way of sharing is a reaction against the lack of understanding about death and bereavement in our days.
As death is considered as a taboo and grief becomes a private affair. The bereaved person often feels lonely and lost, besides the pain caused by the lost of the loved one, the bereaved often feels isolated and misunderstood by his entourage.
To answer this need to grief, it pushes the bereaved to seek comfort and help from strangers, usually those who went through the same kind of experience through the digital world.
This kind of new attitude seems to be a natural outcome of our today’s society.
But it is not enough.
My project intends to create a new perspective of our ‘traditional’ way of mourning -
I believe design can be used as a platform/ tool/ support to share emotions between the bereaved (private) and his entourage (public/ interaction) during this transition period with a transitional object/ system and create an awareness of death and bereavement with a positive insight.
It is not an experiment. It is not a fiction. It does not exist between a tester and a user. It is a cut and paste exchange of a recent personal communication
‘Just want to say I'm with you. If you want to talk, give me a sign. I'll call you.’
My Dearest Winnie,
Sorry it took me so long to reply your message. You're truly an angel and I thank you deeply for your support. Things have been intensive and I am both mentally and physically exhausted from going back and forth to the hospital and at the same time worry about my work in school. I haven't been this stressful in my life. Fortunately my mother is doing well and she is stable. The nurses and doctors are great and they are supportive. All of them claimed my mother as a tough woman and she is going to make it through. It is great to see my mother being able to open her eyes and communicate via pen and paper. She regains her strength as day goes by. She is going to undergo an operation tonight to close up her wound. it is a small operation and things are going to be great. I am beginning to feel much more hopeful everyday passes and I am very thankful that the family all came together in this time of crisis. I really wish you could be here with me. You're first person I thought of when things with mom was turning to the worst. I am sorry to hear that your bf is in the hospital. I hope he is doing well. Please give him my regards. Hows your studying going? Most importantly how are you? These are stressful times and I hope you are taking good care of yourself. That is it for now. Unfortunately I still have many other things to do and Uncle John is nagging me for the computer to check his email....=P
Anyways, I will talk to you later. =]
Miss you & Love you~
XOXOXOMicky a.k.a. Small Small
Support – An example is only ever an example, but this one organically supported the ideas I was working through and emphasizes how important support and love are to the duress of death, in its approach, happening and survival. Love can here be compared with medication. It is a crucial ingredient to well being while trying to comprehend such an emotionally charged and ambiguous universal process.
The internet post of Turkish
Hello, everybody…
I wasn’t quite sure where to post this, so I decide to post it here. Half a year ago I lost my father due to stroke. The real pain here is that he was thought to recover from it, and my family and I were enthusiastic about his return from the hospital as he was getting better. So, two days before his scheduled return home, he suddenly passed away… But the horror did not end here; two weeks after the funeral, me and my mom returned home from the cemetery only to see that my older brother has shot himself…
I am not really the communicative type and it is pretty hard for me to squeeze these lines out. But I am having problems living a normal life after these incidents: I am full of anger and hatred, relying on alcohol for relief more and more often. You know, these deaths really made me realize how ingnorant people are because some of them would even stop talking to me as if I have ‘the touch of death’ or something, or would say some senseless BS like ‘it is fate’ or ‘you have to remain tough’… It is clear to me that they have nothing quite like this in their prefect little lives and really have no idea what they are talking about, so I decided to post here. Besides the only person I can talk it over with is my mother, but I prefer not to because she probably feels way worse than me.
The thing is that I have real trouble getting it together, it is hard for me to get up in the morning, it seems impossible for me to get a job because I am overly aggressive, and I have a problem with communicating to people because I am no longer the same me. So if anyone had a similar situation, or would have some suggestions on how to get one’s life back on track after something like this, I will greately appreciate it.
Turkish.
Digital Communication with Strangers...
Online bereavement support, memorial web sites becomes the more than more popular and fast growing phenomena. This new way of sharing is a reaction against the lack of understanding about death and bereavement in our days.
As death is considered as a taboo and grief becomes a private affair. The bereaved person often feels lonely and lost, besides the pain caused by the lost of the loved one, the bereaved often feels isolated and misunderstood by his entourage.
To answer this need to grief, it pushes the bereaved to seek comfort and help from strangers, usually those who went through the same kind of experience through the digital world.
This kind of new attitude seems to be a natural outcome of our today’s society.
But it is not enough.
My project intends to create a new perspective of our ‘traditional’ way of mourning -
I believe design can be used as a platform/ tool/ support to share emotions between the bereaved (private) and his entourage (public/ interaction) during this transition period with a transitional object/ system and create an awareness of death and bereavement with a positive insight.
Sunday, 26 October 2008
No Time For Death?
Can design aid in overcoming bereavement?
Perhaps yes, if it can provide subtle reminders that you must: Take care of yourself.
Losing a loved one is inevitably devastating and often to a degree that survivors have statistical tendencies towards self-destruction during bereavement. The aim of this work is to investigate the process of bereavement and how sensitive design could be employed towards aiding mourners in locating healthy personal outlets for grief while stimulating considerations of a bright future as opposed to a fading loss.
How to focus on a healthy future during a mourning period, which is necessarily nostalgic? When the center of attention is a death, how could we aid a loved ones’ survivors in concentrating on life?
This topic will be approached from a variety of interpretations, focusing on contradictions, current trends and how time is or could be allocated to deal with death.
Another specific investigation will be directed at cases of loss with a pre-mourning period. This can be illustrated by considering people who spend the majority of their remaining weeks (months, years) struggling against death perhaps living their lives in the confines of a hospital or hospice. Loved ones realize the person will die. They might witness elements of a person’s life perishing one after the other. They have time to deal with this. What can be learned from this position? How might we prepare for loss due to death and more importantly, why does all pragmatism and prerequisite knowledge fail to influence our emotional response when the death becomes reality?
What don't we make time for today that we used to make time for?
Time and Bereavement
Ritual and Bereavement
Object and Bereavement
Monday, 13 October 2008
How do different cultures embrace memory during the mourning period?
The Day of the Dead - El Dia de los Muertos - is a Mexican festival that honors and remembers loved ones who have died. Mexicans and Mexican-Americans believe that the souls of the deceased return each year to visit them. It's a ritual rooted in tremendous pride. Those who celebrate want to create the most welcoming, pleasant homecoming they can for their departed loved ones and reassure them they will never be forgotten.
Judaism's response to death comes from a 3,000-year history. Its tenets emphasize a celebration of life and its basis takes form in providing comfort to the survivors.Jewish tradition has developed a complete and sometimes technical response to death, from the prayers recited to the preparation of the body for the funeral, the comfort offered the survivors and to the memory of the deceased.
“We find something beautiful precisely as we mourn its loss. And if the beautiful is a promise of happiness, as Nietzsche avers, that is only because it tells us of another promise that is already being extracted from us- a promise of memory, a promise of mourning that has always already begun.”
Keywords /Beauty
Loss
Promise
Happiness
Memory
Mourning
Ephemeral / Eternal (But nothing is forever?)
Wednesday, 24 September 2008
Tuesday, 23 September 2008
I wonder if there is a possibility to soothe sorrow?
Bereavement is a powerful emotion. It is painful and exhausting, sometimes it seems easier to avoid confrontation with these feelings. But it is not a viable long- term solution. It’s proved by psychologists that buried sorrow can manifest itself later as physical or emotional illness.
Glass tears . Man Ray
‘It’s so curious: one can resist tears and ‘behave’ very well in the hardest hours of grief. But then someone makes you a friendly sign behind a window, or one notices that a flower that was in bud only yesterday has suddenly blossomed, or a letter slips from a drawer... and everything collapses.’
Colette
Where is the importance of a preserved memory of a loved one today and what is the contemporary translation of it ?
Promise of happiness - Promise of memoryHair jewelry was made as a sentimental way to remember a loved one during Victorian period. A lock of hair was the only physical memento one could keep at the burial of a loved one. It was also a reminder of mortality to the mourner.
Today visual technology is easily accessible; it challenges the existence/ the utility of a physical memento.
can a daily doses of sweet memory provoke a sense of belonging?
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