A NEW festival celebrating and challenging how we live with death opens next weekend to coincide with the Day of the Dead and Hallowe’en.
A Death Café, a shrine-making workshop and a Day of the Dead party are all part of the month-long Edinburgh-based festival, which is funded by Creative Scotland and supported by The Scottish Partnership for Palliative Care, Final Fling, Luminate and Scottish Mental Health Arts and Film Festival.
While it is billed as A Celebration of Death, the festival has the serious purpose of breaking down the barriers that stop people talking openly about their fears and grief.
It has its origins in the suicide of Ian Smith, co-founder and artistic director of the Glasgow-based performance and street theatre company Mischief La-Bas.
His wife, Angie Dight, also the company’s co-founder, set up a three-day event celebrating Smith’s artwork at Glasgow’s CAA last year on the first anniversary of his death. This has now been expanded in the hope that it will “encourage discussion and interaction and challenge any fears we may have about being open about death”.
WHY IS IT NECESSARY?
EXPLAINING the impetus behind the festival, Dight said that she had come to understand that mourning and grieving do not “wholly celebrate a person”.
“My own personal journey with death began in 2014 when, after a severe battle with depression, my husband took his own life,” she said. “The illness had reduced him to a shadow of his former self; after his death, beginning with the funeral, we were able to restore him in our memories back to his full glory. Through celebrating him in death we celebrated his life and all that he gave us both personally and through his art.
“In other cultures death is celebrated and commemorated; we have a lot to learn in our culture in terms of speaking about death and rejoicing in it, but it is becoming more normal.”
She added: “In 2016 we have all been moved by the deaths of many public figures and pop icons. Death is becoming more and more a part of everyday life and in celebrating death we celebrate life.”
WHAT’S ON?
EXHIBITIONS at the Summerhall venue include a replica of Ian Smith’s studio, right, as well as documentation and archival film footage highlighting his performance, music and TV work.
Glasgow painter Graeme Wilcox will exhibit work including collaborations with Smith and Mischief La-Bas. Good Grief – Part II is a reworking of Ian’s Good Grief installation, originally made for the National Review of Live Art with tributes by Angie Dight.
The visual arts programme includes photography from Colin Gray’s It Takes a Village, which looks into the amount of support required when people’s health deteriorates.
Two years in the making, CEIBA – Casa de Todos los Muertos is the result of photographer/artist Ross Fraser McLean’s research into Mexican culture, specifically exploring Mexico’s relationship with death and dying. Unlike most other parts of the world, death is embraced here as part of life, with families gathering annually to remember their dead during Día de los Muertos (Day of the Dead).
McLean’s experience of Day of the Dead inspired him to visit cemeteries and people affected by death across the country. His images capture moments – sombre and quiet, vibrant and noisy – of everyday life, amplified in contrast by the iconography of death. McLean has also created Altares de Muertos (Altars of the Dead), pairing photography with installation and sculpture for the first time in his work. The photographs and objects explore and question the Mexican viewpoint – that death is an equaliser; a reminder that humans are all on the same journey.
ANYTHING ELSE?
AWARD-WINNING actress Pauline Goldsmith resurrects her hilarious and heartfelt journey to the edge of oblivion in Bright Colours Only, the world-touring show that recreates an Irish wake.
Ugly Chief, a new work from performance artist Victoria Melody, explores the British funeral industry and tells the story of how she planned her father’s funeral. For this piece Melody trained to be a funeral director and explored her fractious relationship with her dad while planning a now unnecessary funeral – the exploration of the subject starts with her father’s misdiagnosis with a terminal illness.
The festival opens with a Day of the Dead party on October 28, when there will be live music from Our Ladies of Sorrow and a celebration of Italian horror cinema, its lurid imagery, and even more lurid soundtrack. Mischief La-Bas performers will be presenting interventions and surprises throughout the night, with music and dancing until late.
Over that weekend Final Fling will open the Death Café and there is also a chance to craft an Ofrenda – a shrine or offering – derived from Mexican tradition.
“Death is something we will all experience but something that society finds difficult to talk about,” said Summerhall programme manager Verity Leigh. “We’re interested in exploring how art and artists might be able to help with that. The festival brings together the different elements of Summerhall’s programmes with an eclectic mix of art, music, performance and installation – all investigating, challenging, confronting or celebrating death.”
For the full programme go to www.summerhall.co.uk
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