Re.designing Death @ re:publica
Hate funerals? Who doesn’t? What comes to mind are bleak ceremonies with dreary flowers, old-fashioned coffins and drab sermons, without much differentiation between them, whether they be commemorating a cowboy or a clergyman.
Things haven’t changed much in the last 100 years and we, the redesigning death community, are tired of it. As a mortician in training, Lea Gschiedel has helped families organise some truly personal farewells, but they’re few and far between.
In order to create awareness as to how you can really honour your dearly departed in a way that is fitting to their life, Lea, Virginie, Dirk and I hit the re:publica conference to run a workshop about DIY Funerals.
The aim of the workshop was to enlighten, inspire and of course inform participants that there is a lot that one can do for a loved one after they pass – it doesn’t have to be ‘traditional’.
Virginie and Lea kicked off the session with a presentation packed full of inspiration, unveiling to us the current norms of the funeral industry, juxtaposed with state of the art tech and design developments. From simple activities such as having friends & family paint or decorate the urn or coffin to creating a QR coded tombstone, there are so many ways to bring a bit of personality into the affair. The ladies did bemoan that some of the most impressive things they’d discovered in their research, such as designer coffins and funeral clothes were undeniably impractical with regards to price and accessibility. Perhaps with more awareness, the market here in Europe for such products could grow...?
Urn Capsule painted by a family member
Now we did say it was a workshop – didn’t we? After the presentation we led a board-game-like activity where our participants worked in teams to plan the funerals of various fictional characters.
Would Mary Poppins be buried or cremated? What would a deceased Pippi Longsticking want have done with her Facebook page? And no prizes for guessing which music was chosen for Darth Vader’s funeral ceremony.
There was much fun and laughter in the room, but also a lot of poignant reflection:
“So, what happens to your Facebook account when you die?”
“I never thought about choosing a master of ceremony for a funeral”
“I didn’t know that family members could help prepare and clean the body…”
In tackling this topic in a relatively light-hearted way, we hoped our participants would begin to see that even though nothing can really prepare you for the grief that losing someone brings, an individual send-off is not only possible, it’s wonderful.
As a little giveaway, to encourage our participants to continue in this line of thinking after the workshop was done, and not stow the thoughts away behind the taboo, we gave each participant a wallet sized funeral decree*, in which they could (if they wanted to) fill out their end of life wishes and identify a deputy. We gave everybody two of these cards to encourage that they really have a conversation with their significant other or next of kin.
You Only Die Once. (#YODO). Let’s re.design death together.
*If you’d like a funeral decree for yourself, do get in touch, we’d be happy to send you a pair, in German or in English.
www.redeath.org
