REMEMBER(ING) ME
Kristin Wagner
Created from obituaries—both published and imagined—“Remember(ing) Me” is a meditation-in-reverse, asking, “How do I want to be remembered?” in order to arrive at the deeper question: “How do I want to live?”
Community activation stations will be installed at partner locations throughout the Greater Boston and Worcester areas. These stationary displays will feature rotating prompts to which community members can respond on index cards submitted via onsite drop boxes. Example prompts include: “If you had just five words to write your life story, what would they be?” and “What do you remember most about a deceased loved one?”
Community workshops centered on reflection, discussion, and writing will also take place throughout Greater Boston and Worcester. Over the course of 75–90 minutes, participants will reflect on what achievement and success mean to them, and how those concepts shape the way they hope to be remembered. Through meditation, journaling, and group dialogue, participants will compose their own living obituaries.
Contributions gathered through the activation stations and workshops, alongside obituaries published in notable news outlets, will serve as inspiration for physical research and movement generation for a contemporary dance work that acts as the project’s capstone.
From The Artist:
This work is inspired by the deaths of my grandparents, whose contrasting approaches to death have shaped my inquiry. In many ways, obituaries are our final cry to the universe, “I was here; I existed.” And yet, often this literature, one of the final recordings of our life’s story, is not written or read by us, but rather by those who loved us. My grandmother died without instructions, leaving my family to collectively write her obituary as a grounding ritual amid chaos. My grandfather, by contrast, left exacting directions and a pre-written obituary that felt impersonal and excluded many loved ones, leaving his survivors without a shared process of grief. During the mourning of both of my grandparents, I witnessed grief both unite and divide my family. This resulted in deep reflection on the necessary and unnecessary formalities of death rituals and the delicate balance between living a life and leaving a legacy.
Community activation stations will be installed at partner locations throughout the Greater Boston and Worcester areas. These stationary displays will feature rotating prompts to which community members can respond on index cards submitted via onsite drop boxes. Example prompts include: “If you had just five words to write your life story, what would they be?” and “What do you remember most about a deceased loved one?”
Community workshops centered on reflection, discussion, and writing will also take place throughout Greater Boston and Worcester. Over the course of 75–90 minutes, participants will reflect on what achievement and success mean to them, and how those concepts shape the way they hope to be remembered. Through meditation, journaling, and group dialogue, participants will compose their own living obituaries.
Contributions gathered through the activation stations and workshops, alongside obituaries published in notable news outlets, will serve as inspiration for physical research and movement generation for a contemporary dance work that acts as the project’s capstone.
From The Artist:
This work is inspired by the deaths of my grandparents, whose contrasting approaches to death have shaped my inquiry. In many ways, obituaries are our final cry to the universe, “I was here; I existed.” And yet, often this literature, one of the final recordings of our life’s story, is not written or read by us, but rather by those who loved us. My grandmother died without instructions, leaving my family to collectively write her obituary as a grounding ritual amid chaos. My grandfather, by contrast, left exacting directions and a pre-written obituary that felt impersonal and excluded many loved ones, leaving his survivors without a shared process of grief. During the mourning of both of my grandparents, I witnessed grief both unite and divide my family. This resulted in deep reflection on the necessary and unnecessary formalities of death rituals and the delicate balance between living a life and leaving a legacy.
- Kristin Wagner