Location: Blue Room (Riddell Centre, University of Regina)

• Dale MacDonald, “Dyeing a Good Death”

Ostensibly, the corpse’s experience appears as total, inexpressible interiority; Hamlet’s “undiscovere’d country, from whose bourn/No traveller returns” rings temptingly true for the living, especially if they have encountered a dead body. But I’m not so convinced. This workshop offers participants decolonial and eco-ethical practices for our “future corpses”, as Caitlyn Doughty calls them, and subverting Hamlet’s conception of being dead. Attendants will rehearse their own toxin-free burial and colour a shroud with natural dyes in collaboration with local plant life. This exercise seeks to animate Rebecca Schneider’s claim that “the dead are living everywhere”; the choices we make once we’ve shuffled off this mortal coil are embodiments of our politics, ethics, and aesthetics. They transmit to and reside within the bereaved as well as the new life that burgeons from our decomposition. By considering how our final dispositions collaborate with the land, the corpse emerges as a site of agency. Not only do we return. We remain.

Workshop attendees will be provided with the opportunity to rehearse their deaths in three stages.
First: Introductions and learning current legality of disposition methods sets parameters for corpse-choreography.
Second: Participants will learn and practice different burial shroud wrappings, providing opportunities to consider how their bodies will be handled and viewed by others.
Third: Attendees will be guided through the process of naturally dyeing a shroud with plants and flowers.
-No experience required
-Technical: A room with ample space for people to move freely
-Participants: No minimum-12 maximum
-Audiences welcome

Biography

Dale MacDonald

Dale MacDonald is a writer, educator, and artist working in so-called Vancouver since 2016. Currently working towards a PhD at the University of British Columbia, Dale’s research examines settler corpse-performances, ethical rot, and interspecies collaboration.