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No End and No Beginning

,
Past
  • Free
  • Festival
Three people sitting at a desk with microphones reading from papers. The audience is in the foreground.
Misbehaving Bodies event Do you consider yourself healthy?, Thomas SG Farnetti. Source: Wellcome Collection. Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International (CC BY-NC 4.0).

What you’ll do

Experience a day of performances, discussions, screenings and workshops related to ‘Misbehaving Bodies’ on the closing day of this exhibition. Throughout its duration, artists have been responding to the exhibition and here they will present their research and projects. These events are focused on themes of care, loss, mourning, death, illness and dying – each highly personal yet universal experiences that continually change, with no clear end or beginning.

Dates

,
Past

Past events

  • Screening
Dying Under Your Eyes
Henry Wellcome Auditorium
See a screening of ‘Dying Under Your Eyes’, a newly commissioned film by artist Oreet Ashery. This family portrait of end-of-life care explores themes such as ageing, dying and mourning. The film will be screened every half hour (duration 25 mins). Please note the film is subtitled.

  • Performance
Do You Consider Yourself Healthy?
Reading Room
Oreet Ashery posed the question “Do you consider yourself healthy?”. This provoked many responses from visitors throughout the duration of ‘Misbehaving Bodies’, some of them personal and moving, others funny and blunt. Drop in and listen to this reading of varied responses that reveal how we think about our own mental and physical health.

  • Performance
I Am Not Disabled, the Institution is Disabled
Gallery 2
Artist Amanda Millis poses the question “How can we find health?” Taking place within ‘Misbehaving Bodies’, Millis’s performance brings together community self-care activities within the gallery space. The performance also highlights the difficulty of finding time for leisure and self-care in the increasingly laborious individualisation of our healthcare system. This participatory event includes one-to-one conversations with the artist and the support to use gravity blankets, foam rollers, yoga mats and hand-therapy tools. Millis offers the time and space to enact care and health. This performance will also be supported by artist Farrah Riley Gray.

  • Performance
Wavering Between the Sun, the Bird and the Lament
The Studio
Join artist Josh Bilton for a performance lecture on his research exploring the role of the spirit double and how it can be used as a form of processing loss, grief, uncertainty and emptiness. The immersive experience will include birdsongs performed as laments by cellist and composer Gregor Riddell and dancers, including a sunbird emoji. You will also be invited to wrap an object as an offering that will form part of the artwork.

  • Workshop
A Space to Hold Space
Gallery 2
Join Part Time Collective for a drop-in workshop to create ‘Anxious Objects’: embroidery, scent pouches and written notecards. These objects are sensory and creative outlets, the making of which may help ease any anxiety around difficult topics and feelings such as grief, illness, mental health, body autonomy and memory. The intent is to communally hold a space with others to share, care and learn from each other.

  • Discussion
This Is How I Want It
The Studio
Due to unforeseen circumstances, this event has been cancelled.
  • Speech-to-text

  • Performance
Spoken Word Performance by St Christopher’s Hospice
Experience spoken-word performances by Ahmet Arnavut, Jonathan Massiah and Jocelyn Collison-Kozak from St Christopher’s Hospice, developed with writer and academic Yasmin Gunaratnam and artist Lucie Blake Faggiani. Exploring themes of migration, belonging and loss, this project unites Gunaratnam’s interest in stories, transnational dying and intercultural care. The spoken-word performances will be followed by a short discussion.

  • Performance
Johanna Hedva and M Lamar
The Forum
Experience Johanna Hedva’s ‘Black Moon Lilith in Pisces in the 4th House’ and M Lamar’s ‘Funeral Doom Spiritual’. These two musical performances use forms of lament to commune with the dead. Each artist takes traditional forms of music – Korean P’ansori and shamanism for Hedva, and opera, the Negro spiritual, and doom metal for M Lamar—queering and racialising them for subversive means. Both Hedva and M Lamar’s performances highlight that the process of loss and death is an ongoing one; there are states of death in life and the living.
  • Speech-to-text

Need to know

Location

This is an event with several different activities. Check specific sub-events for their locations.

Multi-part programme

This is a large-scale event with several different activities, which may include drop-in sessions, scheduled performances, workshops or talks. Check specific activities for details and to see if you need to book a ticket or just show up. Spaces for drop-in activities are limited and may run out if we are busy.

For more information, please visit our Accessibility page. If you have any queries about accessibility, please email us at access@wellcomecollection.org or call 0 2 0. 7 6 1 1. 2 2 2 2

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