Death Day:Facing Mortality, Mourning & the Strife of Endings

Death Day: Facing Mortality, Mourning, and the Strife of Endings. Through talks, storytelling, and conversation, we'll explore death not as an abstraction, but as a force that shapes how we live, love, grieve, create, and make meaning. The day includes three presentations and is hosted by Maria Mangini:

Facing the Wave: Ecological Grief as an Act of Reverence with Kirra Swenerton

As an ecologist and healer, Swenerton has been asked to bear witness to the extraordinary loss of biodiversity that defines our moment, while continuing to plant seeds and lay down prayers for an uncertain future. Through stories from the wild world, they'll explore what dreams, gurus, ancestors, butterflies, and plants can teach us about living with loss. Here, ecological grief can become more than an expression of despair, and grow into an act of reverence: a way of honoring what is dying while remaining in relationship with what is still alive.

Mourning Dress: Making Grief Visible with Maria Mangini

Grief may be universal, but mourning is cultural. This illustrated lecture traces the visible language of bereavement from the Middle Ages to the present, exploring mourning dress, etiquette, sumptuary laws, textiles, colors, and the elaborate rules that once governed how (and for how long) the bereaved were expected to signal their loss. We'll look at how mourning customs differ across social classes, how they reflect status and aspiration, and why making grief visible can matter to those living through it.

Gliomancy: Acknowledging and Resisting the Proximity of Thanatos with Tom Banger

What would you do if you were diagnosed with a "terminal," "incurable" condition? In 2023, Tom Banger was diagnosed with brain cancer and began developing what he calls gliomancy: a syncretic mashup of mysticism, shamanism, Stoicism, Shinto, Zen, pop psychology, and the Kübler-Ross grief model. Drawing on performance art, ritual, humor, and what he calls "medical tourism," Banger has spent three years confronting mortality with dignity, courage, and poise. Part lecture, part spell, part ceremony, this participatory session asks how we might meet unwelcome news — and our own impermanence — without surrendering our sense of agency.