Difficult Inheritance with Peter Banki

What to do with the gifts of one’s inheritance? How to do we prepare for them and receive them? How do we assume our responsibilities in relation to the growing inequalities in our society and the prevalence of inter-generational trauma?

Many of us don’t think about inheritance until it happens. Or if we do think about it, there can be a great deal of anxiety. What will I do with what I am given? Will I be given enough? How will I deal with it?

We don’t simply inherit assets and objects (cherished or otherwise), but unconscious memories, values and patterns of behaviour from our families and the wider culture. These often force us to make very difficult decisions, asking us to answer for what is most important to you.

“Wills make adults of us all”, says David Marr profoundly.

In deciding what to do with what we receive beyond consent, we are obliged to address the impasses and unfinished business of our families and culture. Relationships can be damaged or transformed in the process. Inheritance can change our lives entirely.

In this workshop we will consider difficult freedom and responsibility in relation to inheritance, staying with the trouble and the mess.

Humour and Humanity in Writing about Death with Jackie Dent and Nadine Cohen

Join authors Jackie Dent and Nadine J. Cohen for a discussion on the highs, lows, and surprising humour in writing deeply personal stories about death. Jackie’s book 'The Great Dead Body Teachers' delves into her grandparents’ dissection at the University of Queensland, while Nadine’s semi-autobiographical novel "Everyone and Everything" follows Yael, a woman on the edge, grappling with the loss of her parents in early adulthood. Together, they’ll explore how confronting death on the page can open up unexpected insights into life.

Nadine J. Cohen is a Sydney-based writer and refugee advocate published widely in mastheads including The Guardian, The Saturday Paper, SMH, ABC, Harper's Bazaar, and more. Her debut novel, Everyone and Everything, was released in 2023 to critical acclaim and named Booktopia’s debut release of the year. Nadine also co-hosts and produces Grave Matters on SBS, a podcast about death, grief and the business of dying.

Jackie Dent is an author and journalist who has worked for outlets like the ABC, The Sydney Morning Herald, The Guardian, and The New York Times. She has also worked with the UN in Afghanistan, Pakistan, South Sudan, and North Ossetia. She has curated talks for Tedx Sydney, the Ethics Centre and Clear Spot Club, and her work appeared in Critical Practices Inc’s LEF(t) publication at the 2014 Whitney Biennial. Her latest book, The Great Dead Body Teachers, explores whole-body donation and anatomy. She is currently completing a PhD in International Relations at the University of Sydney on ‘The Pleasures of War’.

Interlacing Cloak Making and Garments for the Grave with Pia Interlandi Maree Clarke and Kerri Clarke

Join Maree Clarke, a pivotal figure in the reclamation of southeast Australian Aboriginal art practices, her niece, Boon Wurrung artist Kerri Clarke and acclaimed fashion designer, Pia Interlandi, as they bring together their practices for the first time.

Cloak Making

Dr Pia Interlandi is a design pracademic in the School of Fashion and Textiles at RMIT University. Intersecting fashion and funerals, Pia explores materials and materiality in relation to dress, death, and decomposition. Recent work, ‘Rituals of Obsolescence’, speculates a circular system for death rituals on Mars, intertwining life and death through a symbiotic silk production cycle.

Through her practice, Garments for the Grave, Pia designs rituals for facilitating dressing, and addressing the dead body. She co-designs garments with the terminally ill and dresses them with family for their funerals.

Exhibited at MoMA (New York), Museum Boijmans Van Beuningen (Rotterdam), and the Science Museum (London), most of her work is in graves across Australia and the UK. A founding member of the Order of the Good Death, Natural Death Advocacy Network and Australian Death Studies Society, Pia has spent over a decade advocating for creativity at end of life.

My art is about regenerating cultural practises, making people aware of, you know, our culture, and that we are a really strong culture, and that we haven't lost anything; I think they've just been, some of these practises have been laying dormant for a while.”

— MAREE CLAKE

Maree Clarke is a pivotal figure in the reclamation of southeast Australian Aboriginal art practices, reviving elements of Aboriginal culture that were lost – or laying dormant – over the period of colonisation, as well as a leader in nurturing and promoting the diversity of contemporary southeast Aboriginal artists.

Maree’s continuing desire to affirm and reconnect with her cultural heritage has seen her revification of the traditional possum skin cloaks, together with the production of contemporary designs of kangaroo teeth necklaces, river reed necklaces and string headbands adorned with kangaroo teeth and echidna quills, in both traditional and contemporary materials such as glass and 3D printing.

Maree Clarke’s multi media installations of photography including lenticular prints, 3D photographs and photographic holograms as well as painting, sculpture and video installation further explore the customary ceremonies, rituals and language of her ancestors and reveal her long held ambitions to facilitate cross-cultural dialogue about the ongoing effects of colonisation, while simultaneously providing space for the Aboriginal community to engage with and ‘mourn’ the impact of dispossession and loss.

Maree is known for her open and collaborative approach to cultural practice. She consistently works in intergenerational collaboration to revive dormant cultural knowledge – and uses technology to bring new audiences to contemporary southeast Aboriginal arts.

Maree Clarke has exhibited widely both nationally and internationally, and in 2021 she was the subject of a major survey exhibition Maree Clarke – Ancestral Memories at the National Gallery of Victoria. Other recent exhibitions includeTarnanthi, Art Gallery of South Australia, Adelaide (2021), The National, Museum of Contemporary Art Sydney (2021), Reversible Destiny, Tokyo Photographic Museum, Tokyo Japan (2021) and the King Wood Mallesons Contemporary Art Prize, for which she was awarded the Victorian Artist award. In 2020 she was awarded the Linewide Commission for the Metro Tunnel project (current) and is the recipient of the 2020 Australia Council Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Arts Fellowship.

KERRI CLARKE

Kerri Clarke is an artist of Boon Wurrung descent in south-eastern Australia. Kerri is skilled in a variety of methods, including sewing and working with animal skins. Like her aunt, Maree Clarke, Kerri is active in the resurgence of traditional Aboriginal Australian artistic methods. She is also a counsellor who works with families in New South Wales.

Living Wake with Tash Verco

A living wake is a chance to honour a loved one while they are still here to enjoy the party. It means they have the chance to listen to and appreciate the stories being told about them and can understand the impact they have made on their friends and family. Learn how Tash Verco organised a Living Wake for her mother.

Planning Creatively for your Death with Tom Isaacs and Victoria Spence

Join performance artist, Tom Isaacs and Mortality Doula, Victoria Spence, for a public discussion marking the first step in a shared project exploring creativity, mortality, and artistic approaches to one's own death and to what comes after.

In conversation, Isaacs and Spence will consider questions such as, What role can creativity play in planning for your death, for your funeral, and for your remains? What are the important elements to consider and why? What are the legalities and regulations governing our choices? What practical and ethical issues should we be mindful of? How can the wants and needs of the living be taken into consideration?

The Art of Holding with Peter Banki

While holding forms an integral part of many physical interactions, and while it can, by itself, generate intense emotions and sensations, it is rarely investigated on its own merit. Often we do not actually feel safely held, even though that is what we long for (we can only truly let go when we know that someone will be there to hold us). Once we understand what it is that makes being held a less than satisfying experience, we can be clearer about what it is that we wish to feel in an embrace and where to place our attention.

This workshop will experiment with different ways of holding someone. We will be looking at an entire spectrum from the caring, protective embrace to playful grappling where we can test the limits of our strength.

The Village (Saturday evening)

In our hyper-individualist culture, an enormous burden today is put on families and individuals to do what in the past was done by whole communities. If it is true that it takes a village to bring up a child, it also takes one to support a person who is dying or grieving. For the Saturday evening of the festival, we want to cultivate village-mindedness by curating a diverse array of offerings, experiences, testimonies and performances, which do justice to the spectrum of what it is to be mortal with others on Gadigal land in 2024.

Closing Grief Ceremony with Boats (Sunday Evening)

The closing ceremony will be an opportunity to gather the whole festival together at sunset and will involve a water departure at the Rushcutters' Bay jetty.