Momento Mori (2024 - Ongoing)
Geraldine was awarded an Arts Council England Research and Development grant in partnership with Highgate Cemetery, for Memento Mori a site-specific performance/installation journey in Highgate Cemetery West Side - integrating visual and performance imagery with sung voice and live music - of remembrance, grief, and resolution.
Inspired by personal loss, the history of cemeteries, and our changing attitudes to death and grief, Memento Mori explores different cultures’ rituals of death, burial, and grief; resonates within the common chord of loss and allows an audience space to contemplate their own personal resolution.
A five-part requiem composed by Felix Cross sung by recruited participatory choirs (the word requiem is used in its non- religious definition which is “requiem: an act of remembrance) - provides the infrastructure to explore how psychologist Kubler Ross’s 5 stages of Grief - Denial, Anger, Bargaining, Depression and Acceptance can lead to resolution for both the grieving and the dying.
Inspired by 17th century ‘Memento Mori’ and ‘Vanitas’ still life allegorical artworks, which included symbolic objects designed to remind the viewer of their mortality and of the worthlessness of worldly goods and pleasures, this performance aims to explore and contemporises this genre creating animated 3D life size Vanitas installations that are relevant to today and utilising XR imagery to enhance and enrich the performance.
Memento Mori addresses themes common to all humankind and aims to resonate with everyone; people of all ages, cultures, of faiths or none, (including atheists, humanists, and agnostics) as will the opportunity that it will provide for all those who mourn those they have lost, especially post Covid.
There was a weekend workshop on 11, 12, and 13 October 2024 with Sharings of the ideas so far to invited audiences on the Sunday 13 October. The evaluation and positive feedback from these Sharings aim for us to develop the piece further in order to offer it and reimagine it not only for each of the “7 Magnificent Cemeteries” but also to National and International Cemeteries in 2025/26/27.
Inspired by personal loss, the history of cemeteries, and our changing attitudes to death and grief, Memento Mori explores different cultures’ rituals of death, burial, and grief; resonates within the common chord of loss and allows an audience space to contemplate their own personal resolution.
A five-part requiem composed by Felix Cross sung by recruited participatory choirs (the word requiem is used in its non- religious definition which is “requiem: an act of remembrance) - provides the infrastructure to explore how psychologist Kubler Ross’s 5 stages of Grief - Denial, Anger, Bargaining, Depression and Acceptance can lead to resolution for both the grieving and the dying.
Inspired by 17th century ‘Memento Mori’ and ‘Vanitas’ still life allegorical artworks, which included symbolic objects designed to remind the viewer of their mortality and of the worthlessness of worldly goods and pleasures, this performance aims to explore and contemporises this genre creating animated 3D life size Vanitas installations that are relevant to today and utilising XR imagery to enhance and enrich the performance.
Memento Mori addresses themes common to all humankind and aims to resonate with everyone; people of all ages, cultures, of faiths or none, (including atheists, humanists, and agnostics) as will the opportunity that it will provide for all those who mourn those they have lost, especially post Covid.
There was a weekend workshop on 11, 12, and 13 October 2024 with Sharings of the ideas so far to invited audiences on the Sunday 13 October. The evaluation and positive feedback from these Sharings aim for us to develop the piece further in order to offer it and reimagine it not only for each of the “7 Magnificent Cemeteries” but also to National and International Cemeteries in 2025/26/27.
Pieter Claes: Vanitas with Violin and Glass Ball