Design and Emotions are connected. Find meaning and fly

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2009-06-04T01:32:00.000-07:00

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2009-05-23T08:54:00.001-07:00

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2009-05-21T20:25:00.000-07:00

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2009-05-10T20:03:00.001-07:00

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The story of an invisble wound magazine

2009-04-13T22:41:00.000-07:00

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Thesis first draft

2009-03-12T11:20:00.000-07:00

Introduction

The Story of An Invisible Wound

Don't turn away.
Keep looking at the bandaged place.
That's where the light enters you.
Rumi

The starting point and the interest on my thesis topic come from my personal experience of bereavement.

Death occured in my life for the first time when I was 8. My grand mother died with a cancer and she was 59. When I saw her corpse lying on the bed, I was not afraid and I gave her a smile as a goodbye.

Seventeen years later, I was 25. It was the panic year of S.A.R.S in Hong Kong, people were masked and afraid of the mortality and an invisible virus. Suddenly death became very close to the living in such an urban city.

That same year I lost my father and two uncles. All happened very sudden and unexpected. Although I understand death is unavoidable and it is part of the natural cycle of human beings, when it happened this did not help me to rationalize my emotions. The bereavement experience was long, difficult and painful, but today I can see the beauty within the bandaged place.

This research investigates particular ways that design can be used through the process of bereavement in the West. To be able to answer this question, investigation on the meaning of death and bereavement will be conducted under different perspectives. The data collected for this thesis is based partly from published material in the area of death and bereavement and partly from interviews with experts and interviewers.

Can contemporary design aid the process of bereavement?

Hypothesis: Objects and ritual influence bereavement, and yet have lost their place in the cultural time frames of bereavement. How design can be supportive in this transitional period of grief and giving a new meaning of mourning ritual which is more appropriate in our western society context?

The lost of a loved one can be a painful and confusing experience for the bereaved.
Bereavement touches all of us sometime during our lifetime. According to Statistics Netherlands, an average of 362 people died each day in this country, with more than 132,000 deaths in 2007.
When death occurs, we expect rightly that we will need to adjust to huge changes. In a study from Harvard University, bereaved people suffered from an increase in depression, anxiety, tension and they experienced greater problems of the cardiovascular system. Under the concern of health and well being of a person, there is an actual need to address grief.
It is certain the impact of bereavement varies from person to person and from culture to culture, it cannot be understood from a static or linear perspective.
Social understanding of death and the ways of dealing with death in the West have changed dramatically and continually, though perhaps most drastically during the last century.
The idea of death often associated with taboo and repressed, and consequently mourning becomes introvert.

Issues around death are often difficult and complex. Each death recalls all death. And each mirrors small symbolic deaths and passing; the end of relationships, of ideals, of a myriad moment lost. The suffering around death is one of our most formative human experiences.

This project aims to bring more sensibility and openness on bereavement and consequently on death in today’s western society. My approach does not have a treatment goal, but rather to attempt and support the bereaved by creating a new typology of mourning, which is considerate of our contemporary speed of life and the nomadic patterns between us.

Chapter one: Death across culture and time (+visual supports)

Death has generated the largest number of rituals, each culture has worldview includes beliefs about the meaning and purpose of life and what happens after death. Most of them are based on a belief in an afterlife or reborn, whether leave food, clothing and implement in the burial place as in the Paleolithic Age, or offer prayers at graveside, the purpose is the same: The community that nourished in life is also nourished in death. Death has a place within the community and it is a departure from the community.
It is certain that death ritual is focused on the dead, but simultaneously on life as Metcalf & Huntington suggested, ‘ the issue of death throws into relief the most important cultural values by which people live their lives and evaluate their experiences. Life becomes transparent against the background of death, and fundamental social and cultural issues are revealed.’ (1991:25)

Distancing death from the living.

Twentieth- century social understanding of death and technological development in Western society have significantly influenced the ways of dealing with death and consequently increased the prevalence of complicated mourning. Multiples factors have contributed to this development, among others, urbanization, industrialization, deritualization, increased social mobility, social reorganization, medical advances etc.

Death as taboo? Fear of death?

The acceptance of death requires a confrontation with fear, at base, fear of death is a very common emotional response to death.
Theorists like Ernest Becker believes that the fear of death is a major motivator of all behavior. When the fear of death is handled properly, it can be a positive force which motivates individuals into phenomenal achievements with the goal that those achievements would transcend their physical mortality. (1973- Becker, E. The denial of death. New York: Free Press.) However, this same fear can become destructive and could even result in physical and mental problems when it is not properly handled.
The complexity of this construct suggests that death anxiety is likely to manifest itself in various ways. One of the most common ways in which we display is through avoidance (e.g., Kastenbaum, 1999).
For London based artist Inventory this avoidance in Western society is covered by material consumption and mediated reality. It distances us from actual responses, feelings and even lived interactions.

“Our material world, the moraine of our existence, provokes nothing more than the profoundest disquiet. Supposing we were to make 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.’

But on the other hand, some societies appear to be more accepting of death. The Truskese of Micronesia are an example of a death-affirming society where people start preparing for death at age 40. This acceptance ought to manifest itself in lower death anxiety levels.

Displacement of death

For many thousand of years, death, funerary and mourning rites were not very different in the West then other part of the world.
The old rites still persist in large areas of the West, but according to French historian Phillippe Aries our cultural views of death have changed 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 change happened quickly between 1930 and 1950, especially in the more technologically developed and urban areas. “One no longer died at home in the bosom of one’s family, but in the hospital alone.’ (Aries p.87) The essence of this ‘new’ death is invisibility, a desire for death to retreat from the family and to be confined to hospitals and increasingly, to the hospices. California Sociologist Robert Fulton estimates that the average American family can go for 20 years without encountering death.

This invisibility influences strongly on Western’s worldview towards death, according to British social anthropologist Geoffrey Gorer (1905-85) on his article ‘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 is having the same position in modern life then sex was treated in the nineteenth century. In our society death is avoided and hidden like sex in the past. In Victorian period death was discussed openly and freely 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 avoidance affects our way of grieving and influence the way how we mourn in large areas of the West.

If we are not expressing our grief, what might happen to it?
Psychology Professor Harry W. Martin of Texas Southwestern Medical School points out the danger of the decline in expression of grief. ‘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.’

Chapter two:But what is grief? Mourning and Bereavement?

‘Grief is a state of mind; bereavement a condition. Both are mediated by mourning, a set of acts and gestures through which survivors express grief and pass through stages of bereavement.’ (pg.29, J. Winter, Sites of memory Sites of mourning, Cambridge University press, 1995)

A bereaved may be affected on two levels - internal: psychological and spiritual
- external: physical, behavioral and social

In this chapter I will explore the difference between grief, mourning. An overview will be given on the concept on grief in the West and the development of mourning across time and cultures through visual support.

Learning from their wounds

‘Grief is like a ripple, it becomes bigger than bigger, you never know when it will stop… and maybe it will never stop.’ from interviewer M.

Findings from my one to one conversations with bereaved in Belgium and in The Netherlands, approximately six months after the death, as well as six years and ten years later.
Conversation with respondent included many open-ended questions. This approach allows them to share their stories and experiences with me.

Each story is unique and each person grieves in a very different way.

Some people suffer hardly then gradually accept the lost and moving on to new structure of life.
Some people have more difficulty to adapt, unable to moving on and feeling loneliness and despair for years after.
Some people prefer avoids the pain and erased the dead from their memory.

The length of their mourning period varies, sometimes it takes few months. Sometimes it takes more than two years. Sometimes it is still processing. It shows there is no standard time-frame which can be applied for every person. It is interesting to notice from the internet, books etc, that the idea of curing, coping, get over it etc, these terms are frequently used in association with grief.

‘In many Western cultures today, the experience of grief is spoken of as something to overcome, get over, and resolve so that one can move on and be finished with it. With that end in mind, the medical model of care-giving prescribes ‘treating’ the bereaved ‘patient’ as quickly as possible to promote a swift return to the previous level of functioning.’ (pg. 24-Peggy P. Whiting, Laura S. Wheat, and Loretta J. Bradley)

According to Dr. Phyllis R. Silverman, when grief is viewed as a life-cycle transition it is easier to see that grief is more than the expression of extreme feelings. It involves multiples lost - lost of the person, lost of self in the relationship and a way of life is lost as well. It is a time of loss and change in the bereaved’s life.

Another finding from her research of the Child Bereavement Study is that grief does not end at a given time. (Silverman and Nickman, 1996; Silverman 2000) The bereaved and the children often feel isolated, as if something wrong with them, when their experience does not coincide with the advice they are given to ‘seek closure’, ‘to’ put the past behind them, or to ‘let their grief go’.

Although all my interviewers have their unique way to go through grief, but most of them told me that grief never really goes away, but lessens over time. “This invisible wound is like a physical wound, it needs its own time to heal but the scar could never disappeared.” says interviewer M.

Important indicators for any efforts at aiding in bereavement, are to investigate personal time frames and processes as well as striving for an improved communication concerning the nature and symptoms of grief, in order to grease the transition to a more transparent pattern.

What is mourning? And how does ritual aid in the grieving process?

‘I know of almost no culture where death is easily taken in stride by the mourners. In the long run, yes people deal… and sometimes they find ways of avoiding the new reality as for example in the aboriginals of Australia who are forbidden to mention the deceased for 2 years after the death. We all have rituals that help us deal with this new reality.’ Correspondence with Dr. Phillys R. Silverman, researcher and project director of the Harvard/MGH Child Bereavement Study

Mourning is one of the tradition ‘rites of passage’ through which families can rid themselves of their dead and return to life, there is a wide variation across cultures in how people behave during this mourning period. For example, Jewish families have seven days ‘shiva’, after the burial they stay home and friends brings food as a symbol to offer their condolences and some comfort. Irish wakes involves a lots of drinking and dancing, Greek culture has a ritual of weeping.

Mourning does not just happen inside of a person: it happens in the interaction between people.

Across culture very often mourning ritual- funeral has a very strict time-frame, using anthropologist Arnold van Gennep’s analysis of rites of passage, he has portrayed funerals as having a linear progression: a beginning, a middle, and an end that is often presented as a resolution.

But researchers have found out that grief is characterized by strong emotions that come and go in no particular order. This finding is strongly supported by another anthropologist Rosaldo Rendo, he argues that grief does not necessarily have a very clear beginning and it certainly does not have a very clear end. If grief has an end, it most certainly will not correspond with the end of the funeral ritual. (Encyclopedia of death and dying- pg 22 by Glennys Howarth, Oliver Leaman)

While perhaps applicable in certain specific conditions, in a broader Western umbrellas Van Gennep’s pattern is more problematic than it is concrete. Such a linear perspective chains the bereaved to a time table and the rules established by so-called society at large, which fails on levels of individualism: emotionally, psychologically, and even practically speaking.

Making the Invisible Wound Visible

- Outward signs of mourning

The use of outward signs of mourning is a symbolic and physical way to communicate grief to the others.

Each culture has their particular custom and it dates back to ancient times.
In some cultures, close relatives are expected to styles their hair in different manner, cut of shaved off their hair, or stopped grooming it for a specific time.
In other cultures, relatives self mutilated to express their grief.

In America and Western Europe during the 19th century mourning became an established and highly structured social ritual. Rules dictated that black be the color of full mourning, and the strict etiquette outlining the manner and length of mourning. The stage of mourning is visible by the expression on the clothes, colors, jewelry etc.

Those outward signs usually work under a specific time frame, its length and variation depends on the relationship, social class and gender.

The old rituals, while a comfort and release for some, could be a burden to others. London Psychiatrist Dr. David Stafford- Clark thinks that the new attitude toward death should be considered in the context of ‘the way the whole structure of life has changed since World War II, particularly the very different attitude toward the future which has arisen. It is a much more expectant attitude – an uncertain one, but not necessarily a more negative one.’

In today’s Western Society, outward signs of mourning seems to lost its ground, even the traditional mourning color of black can be wore everyday. But it does not mean that we should go backward and longing for those symbols, because the context is not appropriate into our culture. The misuse of those symbols could become another danger of ‘categorizing’ the bereaved as ‘victim’ and it could create a negative effect from the original meaning.

- From private to public- another way to mourn

To adapt perpetual change of social context raises phenomenal like roadside memorial and recently digital mourning.

Although this marker of death site has been used for centuries, however, since the 1980s there has been a substantial growth in the number of spontaneous and roadside memorials in the U.K. (Gerri Excell, Roadside Memorials in the UK: Private Grief made Public. Unpublished MA thesis, The University of Reading, UK 2004)

This type of organic form of ritual raises the question of why do people choose to grieve outside than inside of a traditional place such as a church or a cemetery?

According to Gerri Excell’s finding, the main reason of this spontaneous way of mourning is based on the sudden, violent and often lonely death of their loved one. This ritual of memorialisation allows an outlet for this grief, outrage and protest. The scene of the death, where those bereft lives changes forever can be regained and controlled and personalized within hours of the death occurring.

To the general public it is a contemporary version of a ‘memento mori’ which is the poignant reminder of our own mortality and the fragility of life in the busy world.

The opinions on this organic form of ritual are diverse. But it is interesting to observe the use of public space and its organic character as a potential direction for a new ritual of mourning.

Digital mourning

‘One is that there are new 'public' practices of mourning which have come out of technological change and application. For example, the phenomenon of virtual cemeteries and on-line memorial sites is very interesting.’ Correspondence with Dr. Margaret Gibson

Why do people choose to find support through internet?

‘Talking to other people who have experienced a similar loss is very comforting. Some people need to do it in person-others find the internet very valuable in making people available to each other.’ Correspondence with Dr. Phyllis R. Silverman

Digital mourning seems to gains the heart of the users and well accepted by bereavement researches. However, on a phone interview with bereavement consultant and journalist Daan Westerink, ‘The digital is good as a supplement but it is not enough.’

It is certain that technological evolution is a big factor of this new movement, another factor is probably related with today’s mobile lifestyles. Some bereaved might feel very lonely and isolated because their relatives are far away during this transitional period. It could create an extra burden to the bereaved when the need of release on a verbal communication level and emotional level is not supported. Interviewer M is a typical example of this new nomadic lifestyle, after her sister died in Taiwan, she needed to go back almost immediately to the Netherlands for her study.

She says: ‘Sometimes it is very difficult for my flat mates to understand my feeling and why suddenly I cry without ‘reasonable’ reason… sometimes I just need to talk and released those pain… and then I will be fine.’

Today geographical distance could bring an extra difficulty on the bereavement process. Physical memorial place like cemetery had another value than in the past. Extensive research from psychologist and bereavement experts stressed the importance of creating a continual bond with the deceased, this focus can aid in the bereavement process. It is an important to reconcile the need for the bereaved with this nomadic lifestyle.

It is also very interesting to see the evolution of mourning, it changes from a very open and codifier character on the 19th century > close and semi codifier> today a sort of half public and half private, the need is more under the hands of the bereaved and less related with the imposed code like in the past century.

Conclusion
What is certain is that everyone grieves every loss in a different way. Grief is true as universally shared and as singular subjective occasion, a design, which speaks to grief, should maintain the same balance; part truth and part subjectivity.

The new typology of mourning should be more organic and personal. It is important to investigate personal time frames and processes as well as striving for an improved communication concerning the nature and symptoms of grief. It is certain traditional mourning ritual provided a supportive transitional period to guide the bereaved back into life, but twentieth -century social understanding of death and technological development in Western society have significantly changed.

Today a new typology of mourning is needed. It should of course respect the believe system, cultural background, identity and the choice of the bereaved and being supportive rather than a set of ‘rigid’ rules to dictated and burden them as some rituals from the past.

Irreversible Cessation Magazine - introduction

2009-02-09T21:16:00.000-08:00

As no one knows about death, we create an imaginary world of consumption. Material culture provides us a vision of immortality in which we can free ourselves from the mortality of human flesh. It distances us from our true materiality, feelings and even lived interactions.

We love and fear to lose.

Social understanding of death and the ways of dealing with death have changed dramatically and continually, through perhaps most drastically during the last century.
The idea of death often becomes a taboo and repressed, and consequently mourning becomes a private affair.

Bereavement touches all of us sometime during our lifetime. Although intellectually and rationally we acknowledge death as a natural part of life, when it happens on a personal level, it is difficult for us to accept. Why does all pragmatism and prerequisite knowledge fail to influence our emotional response when the death becomes reality?

Irreversible Cessation Magazine - contents

2009-02-09T21:15:00.002-08:00

Article 1-

What is death? Death as unknown, as taboo. Who knows what death is, but this is why we talk about it. In this chapter I will offer a literature review to explain the connection between the fear of death and consumption (the concept of failure) in modern society.

Article 2-

Death across culture and time. Rituals have varied extensively with time and space, and have often varied directly with religious perception. This chapter will be approached from a variety of interpretations, similarities and differences.

Article 3-

When the living have no choice?
Mourning is one of the tradition ‘rites of passage’ through which families can ride themselves of their dead and return to life. Mourning will be approached in the following context.

- Digital and physical
- Past and present
- Dead and life
- Inside and outside

Article4-

Death is not dead –
Artists love death and death loves art, but why doesn’t designer love death?
examples of death in art, design and music etc.

Article 5-

Can design aid in overcoming bereavement?

Keyword- transition

Most of us are in fortunate enough positions to believe that we hold some amount of control over events that take place in our lives. However, when a death occurs and takes away someone we love, we are expected to adjust to huge changes that we didn't ask for and certainly don't want. We are left feeling helpless and out of control. People who normally cope well with all types of crises can be left dazed and damaged.

My motivation for this project is my interest on the repressed emotion of the bereaved.

How a healthy mourning can provides courageous awarness and acceptance of death?

Irreversible Cessation Magazine - conclusion

2009-02-09T21:15:00.001-08:00

Research question

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No time for death?
Can design aid in overcoming bereavement?

Abstract

2008-12-08T07:59:00.000-08:00

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?

Mindmap/ Drawing

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Litterature review

2008-12-08T07:48:00.000-08:00

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

People research report

2008-12-08T07:47:00.000-08:00

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.

2008-10-26T17:41:00.000-07:00

Midterms submission

2008-10-26T15:12:00.003-07:00

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.

2008-10-26T15:12:00.001-07:00

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

2008-10-26T12:20:00.000-07:00

drawing of my topic

2008-10-26T09:52:00.000-07:00

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?

2008-10-13T02:28:00.000-07:00

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.

2008-10-13T02:18:00.000-07:00

“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

2008-10-13T00:33:00.000-07:00

artist / Hannah Bertram

Ephemeral / Eternal (But nothing is forever?)

2008-10-13T00:12:00.000-07:00

"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

2008-09-24T02:57:00.001-07:00

Premier Deuil .William Bouguereau

Sorrow, like a heavy ringing bell, once set on ringing, with its own weight goes; then little strength rings out the doleful knell.

William Shakespeare

I wonder if there is a possibility to soothe sorrow?

2008-09-23T18:35:00.001-07:00

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.

2008-09-23T18:03:00.000-07:00

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 ?

2008-09-23T17:59:00.001-07:00

Promise of happiness - Promise of memory

Hair 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?

2008-09-23T15:58:00.000-07:00

What is culture shock? Crisis emerges out of frustration found in the new complexities of routine activities. In this situation, struggle and depression are imminent and the sojourner must be able to locate themselves in their new surroundings.