tanatolab

How can we go through farewells with greater presence, dignity and tenderness? How do we accompany each other in moments of extreme vulnerability? How can we prepare for this transit? Tanatolab is a gathering to share experiences, practices and critical perspectives on death.

Politicizing the processes of illness, death and mourning involves articulating and strengthening community networks. This space seeks to be a political, somatic and spiritual device that helps us reconcile with death from a place of interdependence, mutual care and social justice.
 

Session 1

February 26 from 5:30 p.m. to 8 p.m. | Language: Spanish / English

In the first part, DU-DA will open its research 'collective learning to redesign death' through a presentation guided by the story and intimate images of its road trip with a death doula in the US. The shared journey will take us to know some of the most inspiring projects in relation to ecology and death care.

In the second part,  we will have a conversation about support at the end of life. Participants will be Cristina Lasmarias, a nurse specialized in palliative care, and Sarafina Landis, a death doula specialized in VSED support (voluntary stop eating and drinking), mutual aid, and queer community resilience.

Session 2 — Tunnels of light - Die Before you Die

February 27 from 5:30 p.m. to 8 p.m. | Language: English

Sarafina Landis and sound artist Shoz will offer an experiential sound performance that will invite people to come closer to their own mortality and contemplate the regenerative fecundity of decomposition and its spiritual mysteries. They will also share their experiences in queer care community activism in the margins of oppressive systems.

bios

DU-DA is a collective of mediation, research and artistic production. Morir Guay was born in 2019 thanks to the La Escocesa and resulted in the book Morir guay. Voces y relatos para no tener miedo. This line of research around the prevailing discourses and protocols on death and its counter-narratives is articulated around a series of methodological experiments that are based on the hypothesis that if we create a careful space to break the taboo around death , we can initiate a paradigm shift to enhance sovereignty and ecology in dying. +info

Sarafina Landis (they/them) began their deathwork journey on the Olympic Peninsula, after an intimate experience of supporting a loved one through Medical Aid in Dying - filled with ritual and planning and connection with the land, and discovering deathcare as a soul calling. The path took Sarafina from coast to coast working in conservation burial, home funeral care, bedside VSED support, and end-of-life community organizing including the founding of the Dying Matters Guild nonprofit. They have a thesis work on the intersection of death care, ancestral healing, and collective liberation, called Body As A Future Offering, and facilitate interactive performance pieces with the project Tunnels of Light. +info

Cristina Lasmarias is a nurse and holds a PhD in Comprehensive Care and Health Services from the University of Vic. She is responsible for geriatrics and palliative care planning in the intermediate care area of the Department of Health. She is a palliative care activist in various scientific societies.

Shauna Frantz (Shoz) (they/she) is a sound artist and somatic psychotherapist based in the Shenandoah Valley, Virginia, USA. Their work emerges from a deep listening to the environment and an intimate connection with the land. Inspired by the soundscape and geography all around, their practice is both a response and an invitation to stillness and sensory perception and works with themes of place, self, and other. Through field recordings, raw and processed rhythms, textures, and melody, they create experimental compositions that invite you to immerse yourself in a contemplative sound experience. +bandcamp | +info

The research 'Morir Guay. Aprendizajes colectivos para rediseñar la muerte' is supported by the Daniel and Nina Carasso Foundation in the edition Componer Saberes 2024-25.

If you have any needs or questions regarding the accessibility of this activity, please, visit the page "access La Escocesa" by clicking here