Midterms submission

bibliography

few words...

memory

transition

suffer

hope

deconstruction

time

ephemeral

decomposition

feeling

signs

and Music...

No particular order but these are my unfinishied inspiration of this particular moment.

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

drawing of my topic

people research plan


experts from ....

Utrecht University -
The Research Institute for Psychology & Health -Psychotrauma and grief

Magaret Stroebe
Jan Van Den Bout
Prof.dr. Rolf Kleber

experts from...

hospice and palliative care

experts from...

daily life

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

Dis/appear

artist / Hannah Bertram

Ephemeral / Eternal (But nothing is forever?)

"Return to the King. Tell him I catch my falling tears in the crystal bottle he gave to me."

The golden apple tree of Virna Sheard, illustrated by Norman Price