Laurel Hill West

Just as in life, dying is not only an individual experience but one that’s part of an interlocking framework of systems often driven by profit and power. The current deathcare industry in the U.S. reinforces systemic inequities based on class, race, ethnicity, ability, sexual orientation and gender identity, and centers dominant Western ideas of how aging, dying, and grieving should look. 

What could it look like to decolonize or undo the ideas and practices that privilege medicalized and commercialized ways of dying? What are the values, rights, and ancestral knowledge-ways that can help us re-envision and re-shape deathcare so that everyone has access to an autonomous and dignified death? What are the holistic ways we might reclaim human-centered, community-based practices that support an interconnected culture of dying that is just, equitable, and ecologically sustainable? Join Saharra Dixon, Eiko Otake, Krista Nelson and Narinder Bazen for a discussion that envisions the future of dying and deathcare. 

Laurel Hill West

Aging in Black communities is often framed through crises—health disparities, economic insecurity, systemic neglect, and premature death. But what if we reframe the conversation to center the power of Black eldership, the artistry of intergenerational wisdom-sharing, and the radical act of preparing for a good death? This panel brings together Black death doulas, aging scholars, and artists who explore the intersection of mortality, culture, and creative expression. 
Through storytelling, research, and lived experience, panelists will examine the Combined Axes of Personal and Collective Grief in African Americans, the ways grief shapes Black futures, and how creative expression (specifically, Afrofuturism) can transform our understanding of aging and mortality. This conversation will challenge dominant narratives of death and grief in Black communities, and emphasize Black agency in shaping holistic, intentional, and liberated approaches to death, grief, and legacy to pave ways for more intentional, healthful futures. 

Laurel Hill West

How might the practices of caretaking, grieving, and creative expression intersect? Join Philadelphia Death & Arts Festival artists Mel Hsu, mayfield brooks and DonChristian Jones for a conversation about caring for aging parents. While different for everyone, caretaking can be a profoundly meaningful, difficult, and transformative experience–from providing at-home hospice care to having important conversations about a loved one’s wishes, navigating changing relationships, processing grief, managing self-care and finding community support. 

The artists will discuss personal experiences in caretaking roles and how those embodied experiences have informed their creative work. Afterward, join a cozy space for informal and supportive group exchange about any of your own caretaking experiences. 

Laurel Hill East

37 years apart, friends and artistic collaborators Eiko Otake and DonChristian Jones have created multiple performance and video works together. Their bodies co-inhabiting a wide range of spaces, they ran, collapsed, and held each other. Their spoken and non-verbal dialogues have focused on violence, survival, and witnessing. 

Prior to their site-specific performances at Laurel Hill East, which will intersect with each other, join them for a conversation: what does it mean to create urgent work? How do massive deaths differ from personal deaths? They will also recall how they attended the death and dying of a parent.