Deathfestival Specials
“Specials” are offers at the Death Festival that take place alongside the workshops. Special experiences, consultations, talks. Just see what suits you best!
Preparing your Death // Molding Feelings // Final Gesture // Grief Conversations // Audio Journey // Video Interviews // Talks about Pregnancy Loss
Preparing your Death with ‘Instant-Die’: an Experiential Space for Letting Go
with Julia Funk and delta RA’i
Birth preparation is familiar to us. We try to grasp how a newly formed life enters our world. What this birth process means for our bodies as well.
Each of us will die and thus leave our own body behind. But what does it feel like? How are we prepared to say goodbye to our own outer shell?
The ‘Instant-Die’ team offers a protected, tranquil space to sense this “birth-backward journey.” An individual experience, without words, with devotion.
Molding feelings
with Catherine Marten and Maurice Hauser
Life also means goodbye. A loved one dies, a shared path ends. And suddenly there is emptiness, pain, anger, or speechlessness. In such moments, our hands may take over what words cannot express.
Foto: Marie Dzingel
While kneading, you give your feelings a shape – completely free of rules and guidelines. Perhaps a solid lump emerges, a fragile figure, a chaotic form. Everything is allowed. Just knead away!
Kneading changes, just like our feelings. In modeling, a space is created for memory, change, farewell, and everything that cannot be put into words. What you shape can give you support and remind you of something – for now, for later, for the journey ahead.
Final Gesture
with Vanessa Langer
In many cultures, the care given to the body after death is both an intimate and collective gesture, steeped in memory and transmission. Funeral rites are not only about physical preparation: they are a passage ritual.
In the West, these gestures have gradually been reduced to technical and hygienic procedures, reflecting a medicalized relationship to death, stripped of much of their symbolic resonance and emotional depth.
My installation opens a performative space dedicated to washing the body, inviting a sensorial experience: to observe, to take part, to question.
This peformative ritual becomes an invitation to slow down, to come closer, to sense its universal and collective dimension and to weave death back into the continuity of life.
You may experience the ritual with a partner or within an existing group, or choose to receive it or offer it to someone willing to share.
One on One Conversations on Topics of Grief
with Jessica Zeckert
A festival on the subject of death and dying can trigger old, current and perhaps impending grief in people.
Jessica Zeckert, a trained grief counsellor, will be on site during the festival and offers support in the form of conversations or body-oriented methods.
Whatever is on the agenda.
Your Time has Come...
with Nana Bardawilia
Take an auditory journey through your body in its final moments.
What exactly happens as the body slowly lets go? Listen to your inner self.
This experience is available throughout the festival and is designed for individuals. The total duration is approximately 10 minutes.
Nana and Nico will accompany you on your journey and will be available afterwards.
What I Still Want to Say - Video Interviews
with Tobias Zwior
Tobias is presenting his project “What I Still Want to Say” at the Deathfest.
Imagine you knew you wouldn’t live to see tomorrow. What would you still want to say? What would you like to share with the guests at your own funeral? What do you wish to leave behind for the world and those around you?
In short but deep interviews, you can answer questions like these in a safe space, and the outcome is a cinematic mini-portrait. You’ll receive the final video to keep and share as you wish.
Counselling and support offer on the topics of pregnancy loss and stillbirths
with Dr. Andrea Gipperich
Pregnancy loss or termination in any form and the associated grieving processes are highly taboo and intimate topics that are (or have to be) dealt with by those affected, usually in secret and often with little support. This is in stark contrast to the high number of people who go through these experiences.
During the festival, there is the opportunity to talk about what has been experienced and suffered, to clarify open questions and physical or medical details.