The importance of changing our attitude towards death

with Beatrice Antonie Martino

HEIDI´S INTRO

It is quite unusual that a young woman dedicates her academic graduation to the theme: death and grief with the intention to be an advocate for re-integrating these taboo topics back into our life. Beatrice has just earned her MA by uniting her intellectual research with her artistic inclinations. She set up a visual arts installation which was opened to the public the day before the Corona shutdown. Hopefully it can be shown some day in the future.

What is someone going through when she loses a person who was very close? How do the others respond to their loss? The common experience is that people might come to the funeral or just send a card. After a few weeks nobody connects with the mourning person in the sincere inquiry of how they are feeling, how they are coping with the loss, what is going on in their hearts and heads. People avoid asking and expect that you behave as if nothing had happened: go to work after a few days or weeks – or even the next day – as if you had just overcome a minor illness. Poeple expect you to not talk about your present state, they don’t want to be bothered. Why?

We have outsourced death out of our lives, we send the dying people into hospitals and hospices – if there are any. Hardly anyone dies at home surrounded by family and friends. We have lost, or better suppressed, the deeper knowing that death is part of life and that fear of death equals fear of life. We cannot live fully our lives when we constantly fear death and try to not be reminded by avoiding everything connected with it. Our materialistic culture has impacted us to the point that most of us don’t even realise this deeply ingrained fear and the constant attempt to run away from it. I certainly can see it arise in myself and recognise the necessity of developing practices and tools to face the fear and to lean into the inevitability of losing loved ones and dying oneself, today, tomorrow or some day in the future. Who knows?

Beatrice’s work aims to inspire people to accept their grief and to find ways to go through it in good ways, in order to live and enjoy life fully. It was a real joy to talk with her and to be enticed by her positive energy and dedication to follow her heart and her passion.

ABOUT BEATRICE

Beatrice Antonie Martino is a Brooklyn-based, multidisciplinary installation artist, choreographer, performer, and grief-activist. She specializes in crafting site-specific, multi-sensory experiences and interactive environments that hold space for introspection, emotional processing, and community connection. Working at the intersections of live performance and technology, she uses video art + projection, movement + choreography, and creative writing + spatial design, to build worlds that encourage holistic engagement with our shared humanity. Beatrice’s academic background includes B.A. degrees with honors in Dance and Psychology from the University of California, Santa Barbara, and an M.A. degree in Individualized Study from NYU Gallatin (artistic thesis: “What Remains: Ritual Spaces for the Contemporary Mourner”). Her current work, which is highly collaborative, explores individual and collective relationships to grief and mourning, and seeks to create new healing rituals to honor the dead. For more information about Beatrice, please visit: https://www.beatricemartino.com/

WHERE to find WHAT in the video

0:00 Intro Heidi

1:20 Beatrice introduces herself: artist and MA in contemporary view of death and grief in the US

2:40 How come a young person works around dying? Beatrice shares her experience with illness and death and how she tried to cope with it.

5:25 Nobody understands what it means to lose the father. Beatrice felt very alone and went into art. Other losses accompany every major events in her life.

7:30 Life purpose as a grief activist. Also that caused by the pandemic.

8:40 Heidi: The avoidance of people to care about the grieving person. The expectations to “get over it”. This is very strange in our society.

10:30 The critique in her thesis: the misinterpretation of grief as a linear process. It is much more complicated, all sorts of emotions and multi layered . cyclical and messy.

12:15 Beatrice’s first grieving experience: a shock, not knowing what to do. Rituals are gone from our culture. Difficult to integrate the reality of death.

13:55 Heidi shares her experience with the death of her father.

15:30 When you see the bodies you can process the reality of death better. Beatrice feels for the people dsying with Covid, alone and people cannot be there or see their bodies before they are taken away.

18:10 CHildren are hindered to be in contact with death by seeing their dead relatives, which will create a bif shadow in them (referring to our series WOMEN MATTERS where we talked about shadow for 3 times)

18:50 Philippe Arielle: “The Western attitude about death and dying”. A historical overview shows how the attitude has changed completely since the Middle Ages where life and death was interconnected. Death as medical failure. The desire of immortality.

21:25 Heidi shares a story about hoe people are treated in hospital.

25:00 When caring people don’t care about the emotional state of the patient. The ability to chose to die.

26:00 “The death and dying factory”: get on with it! What language is used!

27:00 End of life care people confirm that dying people seem to have a choice when to go. THe example of Beatrice’s grandmother.

30:50 Heidi shares about Mark: his soul decision.

33:30 The shiny transparent eyes.

34:30 “re-imagine end of life” Organisation. Mission statement: face death for living more fully.