Performing Mourning: Laments in Contemporary Art
Performing Mourning: Laments in Contemporary Art
<p>/ by Guy Cools ; ed. by Lisa Marie Bowler; design by Metahaven. - Amsterdam : Valiz, 2021. - 244 p. ; 21 cm. - (Antennae – Arts in Society, 30)</p>
ISBN: 978-94-92095-98-5
In a poetic, meandering, personal way Cools explores cultural habits, traditions, rituals, and artists’ performances. His narrative looks into many forms of laments: literary, anthropological, philosophical, and in contemporary art practices. The latter part delves into artistic strategies to address or embody mourning: dialogical strategies that deal with personal losses; collective mourning rituals and how they invite communities to witness these losses; contemporary examples of laments that are not only used to dialogue with the dead but also to communicate with loved ones who are absent because of migration or exile; a very specific form of mourning that occurs when we grieve for the unrealized potential of a child’s unlived life, including that of an unborn child. And finally, the very recent phenomenon of lamenting not just the losses of the past, but also the loss of a future.
