Skip to main content

Performing Pandemic Grief: The Arts of Losing (Day 2, 18 November: In person)

When: —
Venue: Birkbeck 43 Gordon Square

Book your place

Day 2: Keynes Library, 43 Gordon Square, WC1H 0PD 

(We will endeavour to stream the keynote via Teams and will circulate a link). 

Keynote lecture

Dr Lucy Selman, Associate Professor in Palliative and End of Life Care, University of Bristol

Workshops

David Harradine, Co-Artistic Director, Fevered Sleep
Shabnam Shabazi, Multi-disciplinary artist

Description 

This Wellcome ISSF-supported symposium, hosted by Birkbeck Centre for Contemporary Theatre, explores the role of theatre, performance and related art practices in the experience and expression of grief in the context of the COVID-19 pandemic. Planned as a hybrid event, taking place online (17 November, via Teams) and in person (18 November, Birkbeck School of Arts), the symposium approaches grief as a psychological, medical, anthropological and cultural response to death and loss, including in an expanded sense that includes relationships, employment, social life, cultural participation and life opportunities. Bringing together artists, academics, community organisers, health and social care professionals, the symposium aims to explore why and how people grieve and don’t grieve; where and when this happens; the role of art, ritual, social and cultural practices in this process; and the particular nuances of grieving in the wake of COVID-19.  

The ongoing COVID-19 pandemic calls on us to examine our relationship to grief with urgency, owing to the scale of its impact (an estimated 6.5 million have so far died); the ways in which its speed has made grief difficult or even impossible to process; how pandemic grief has become folded into other events, including personal illness and loss, the Black Lives Matter movement (and its losses),  the war in Ukraine, the death of world leaders; climate grief; and how social quarantine and accelerated digitization have frustrated established mourning practices and produced new forms. The symposium is spurred by the contention that the arts have emerged as important strategies and practices to support the processing of grief during the pandemic, and it aims to stimulate and support conversations around this phenomenon.  

The symposium features three strands: 1) invited specialist keynotes, panels and workshops; 2) panel presentations; 3) a Peltz Gallery/Birkbeck Centre for Contemporary Theatre new digital artwork commission. 

 

Day 2: Schedule

10.00-10.15     Welcome (Keynes Library)

10.15-11.00    Health Rituals: Jo James, Ruby Colley and Dr Nicola Abraham (Keynes Library)

Break 

11.15-12.15    Grief Personal and Social: Rhiannon Armstrong, Martin Kenny, Adie Mueller (Keynes Library)

Break

12.30-13.00     Funerary Rites: James Murray (Keynes Library) 

Lunch 

14.00-15.00     Keynote 2: Dr Lucy Selman (Keynes Library)

Break 

15.15-16.45    Workshop 1: Prof David Harradine (Keynes Library);  Workshop 2: Shabnam Shabazi (G10 Studio)

Support Services

If you find any of the material explored in this symposium upsetting, and would like to speak to someone qualified to listen, we encourage you to consider contacting some of the support services recommended by Mind. 

 

 

Contact name: