CAFE MORTE 2014 - 2018
Cafe Morte looks at the way in which visual culture represents death and dying, mourning and grieving through art, dreams, desires, imagery and poetry.
CAFE MORTE is a pop up research group made up of senior lecturers, undergraduate and postgraduate students from Falmouth University, curators and artists. Its central focus is to discuss the rich and varied themes of death found in art and literature. We have adopted the model of the recently popular Death Cafe’s, which have arisen worldwide as a meeting place in which to discuss death over a cup of tea. CAFE MORTE is art in the wake of death.
In the wake of death, the space after, creativity takes place. Death and dying are integral to art and literature. Death generates a creative response in artists, writers and the individual through memorialising and making visible the space it occupies. Is creative expression elevated through loss? Does it become richer and deeper? Following death a metaphorical postmortem occurs where the space of death is examined, questioned, taken apart and reassembled through writing, music, performance, ritual or visual art. Death rites bring out creativity.
This pop up research group builds from an existing semi-structured network established at Falmouth University in 2014. As a group we have met regularly, each member leading a critical debate or discussion starting with an object, artwork, film or text to generate a series of questions and ideas relating to death. The research and conversations have been thought provoking and varied in their content covering topics such as immortality of the artist, metaphorical death experienced in life, materiality of death as seen in dust and ashes, the memorial space, the vagina dentata and mythological death rites. Our research is documented on a blog (www.cafemorte.com) where we share practice and responses to death in visual and literary culture.
Creating a research platform for open discussion around the often, tabooed subject of death we aim to promote awareness of the issues surrounding it and how to discuss them in relation to our creative practice.
Lost for Words
Lost for Words (2015) a curated exhibition working with students to host a project which invited artists to respond to the theme of death and loss. As part of the curated event poetry, readings and open mic sessions took place in the exhibition space enabling a range of creative responses to the theme of grief to take place. The project was led by third year fine art students at Falmouth University facilitated by Mercedes Kemp and Lucy Willow.