Perspective Presents: Grayson Perry Creates Funeral Art for Roch's Journey

foreign [Music] this is a series about the biggest events in our lives everywhere on Earth human societies have found ways to Mark the rights of Passage almost all of us go through you're so beautiful thank you so I'm going to travel to some extraordinary places around the world to see how they celebrate the landmarks of Life birth Coming of Age marriage and death ritual has shaped our culture it has come out of our natural bodily instincts the way we behave the way we move the way we feel I'm Grayson Perry I'm an artist and in my work I've always tried to cast an anthropological eye on the world I live in that Spirit has just come all over my shirt and it seems to me that here in fast changing increasingly secular Britain we're in danger of forgetting what a rite of passage can do for us I've been at funerals where the priest forgot the name of the deceased and their partner so I'm hoping the ceremonies are experience will have something important to teach my privilege when I get back I'll meet people in the UK who are going through the same events and who want to mark them in ways that feel true to their lives I'm really interested to talk to you about how we can help you have a really good death together we'll devise our own ceremonies Rites of Passage for how we live now all rituals were invented by somebody they didn't just come out of the eater from God foreign I traveled to the Indonesian island of sulawesi to visit a people whose ideas about death could hardly be more different from our own living high up in the remote and rainy mountains that run down the spine of the island the taraja have held on to many of their traditional beliefs where most of Indonesia converted to Islam Hinduism or Christianity [Music] I've been invited to the funeral of Mr ALU and on the first day of what will be a five-day long ceremony I met his 86 year old Widow foreign how long were you married to your husband seventy oh my goodness when did he die be hard to be late for a taraja funeral Mr aloe has been dead for over a year [Music] this is so alien to our own British concept of death and funerals I mean here's Mr ALU he's been lying here in state really in this traditional house and his widow's been sleeping in the Next Room a taraja funeral only happens once the family feel they're ready for it and they typically wait for a year or more for the aloes that moment has finally come [Music] the Buffalo are funeral gifts from local families and communities and they'd all be slaughtered before the ceremony was over the more Buffalo die the more people respected you it's satisfyingly tangible Mr Aloo a distinguished Village Elder and coffee grower got 24. hello this is about status in your Society it's also what a good sport and quite gruesome this isn't a funeral for someone who's just died this is not grief in the roar in a way this is a funeral for a person who died year ago [Music] whilst the slaughter and spectacle of Mr alu's ceremony continued I want you to understand what this separation between a death and a funeral does for the taraja emotionally so I traveled to the next Village to meet the joshuas the family matriarch Mrs Joshua had died but I arrived at a fraught moment [Music] one of Mrs Joshua's daughters had come from another Island to visit her [Music] [Music] foreign how long has your sister been here in this room dead marvelous how do you feel or your family having her here in the house Nana [Music] [Music] until you give her food and drink and talk to her yeah yeah [Music] um [Music] and does having the body here in the house help with grieving and coming to terms with the death the first question that's on your lips I know it is does it smell but every village or family will know someone who has been handed down the knowledge on how to embalm the body and they will use maybe Palm wine and local flowers and roots and this works because I can tell you there is no smell and also you'd think you know it's something horrific or scary because we that in our tradition you know the body is something we are scared of here it is completely okay it's very domestic it's very sweet it's a member of the family it's ordinary [Music] [Music] why does she pinch my nose like that she likes the long nose to see for local people so therefore she touch it yeah for the next grandchildren hopefully see grandchildren has a long nose also and handsome like you [Music] [Laughter] [Music] looking at this funeral it's really made me thought when do we really die we in the west we're so bound to rationalism and science we think it's the moment we stop our hearts stop beating our brain death but maybe we die when we're forgotten or when we're not loved anymore and maybe that says something about our attitude to feelings you know here they take them very seriously because they give it plenty of time and ceremony and space for those feelings to take on reality and to have their do important whereas in the west we think up dead on go stop the smell let's get rid of it I think very powerful about this [Music] death is the most important and inevitable rite of passage of all and yet the taraja people had shown up for me how in Britain we shroud it in silence [Music] the first British ceremony I traveled from siliwezi to Hounslow proud trade unionist local government worker and father of two Rogue was diagnosed with motor neurone disease and given 18 months to live eight years later he's still going strong so Rogue you've been staring down the barrel of death now for quite a few years what's your relationship with it now it's difficult because there's very few people in the same situation as me very few people that could understand exactly what's happening with me and there's not a huge amount of people that wanted talk about us they probably think that I'd be better off not talking about it because sometimes I feel it's what they're actually doing is they're not comfortable with it themselves because we also have this notion about once that arrives the person is transformed that I don't think there's ever been painted the artist that started there's been plenty of pain in the earth's living I understand now that if I stopped using the ventilator it would take about seven to ten days the idea of that's used to frighten me but sometimes these days I just want to get it over with rogue's clear-eyed view of death is bracing but it can't always be easy for his wife Deirdre to hear foreign it's funny for me it's like my dad died suddenly that was it one minute he was mowing the grass and then he came inside a collapsed that was the end of him and so this being able to really treasure the time you have left knowing that it's limited but in a way it's you know it's a kind of a blessing to know that um I remember a friend of mine saying oh when I told her that you know work had motion neural disease is extremely ill I just thought oh you're gonna have to be so nice to him now you're never going to be able to have an argument you can't you won't be able to shout it already that's gonna be so hard as she said um but I think you can tell you that that's not the way it works you know you still do you have your relationship you can you do you have arguments and but that's part of life and it's part of living with it you know I think there's a lot of ways that we've lost touch with how we formalize the really big events I never even went to my mother's funeral last year because of family relations not being existently but my my brother went to it and my sister went to him and my sister's word she used she said was it was the most inappropriate occasion she'd ever been to and that wasn't necessarily what that was a she was casting a judgment on and I think was that the whole ritual in its perfunctoryness it did not reflect the tone the feelings the history of the people in the room or the person in the coffin and I I'm really interested to talk to you about how we can help you and your family and your friends have a really good death [Music] I think what we could understand from the taraja people is that you know the rituals and the Traditions that they've developed they're telling us something about what it is to be human you know I don't think we're any different from them I think that you know we have the same needs we have the same existential philosophical difficult intangible things to think about but they've ritualized them and they've put them in their lives they've got these nice definite things number of Buffalo check you know neighbors turn out check do this sing this check you know we know we live in a very secular society and I'm looking to see how we can reframe these big moments in our lives you know re-energize them I want us to feel more alive in that moment of death foreign and I are going to devise a rite of passage for rogue that feels right for their situation a ceremony to which I will contribute saman [Music] I traveled to the nether Neville's estate on the outskirts of Middlesbrough to meet Alison and Kevin six months earlier their 17 year old son Jordan had been knocked off his bike and killed by a drink driver some of the photos are from when he was a child going up to 17. and the top one there was on my 40th birthday in December it's really hard for me to accept it's gone before me I should have come before him does all this help it's um it's helped me in a way that they when I'm gonna go and see him I've also done his bedroom in the red and blue another place where I go to speak to him [Music] [Music] it would have been three four-year-old we did have a wedding DVD and very first dance where Jordan stands on with me at warned clear from there on might just cuts out completely so hard to describe because I'm not religious but she's always telling me let me go but I don't want Lego just have one more quickly one more case I know my time funny to yourself but many days when it's been cloudy I've seen his face in the clouds are you religious Kevin uh not really no that we I've got better than I was conversation with him I said goodnight to him and I work with mine several month to him it was always still here for him I'm sort of interested you know I'm an artist so I'm interested in making things what was what was the start of the wall and I was so wonderful and just how I looked at the every bit of clause he had on was either a red hoodie red t-shirt his Trinity bottoms was always blue enough didn't I will just sit the way we are like talking we look at Jordan's what because that is Jordan's walk I feel like I'm at the beginning of a religion I feel like I'm at witnessing the birth of a major belief system is sort of like I can understand how World cultures were born from strong feeling the feeling you know the the the basics of philosophical and moments of life you know that they have to make sense of them you know because they feel so senseless and irrational and our brain is crying out for order and meaning and how are we going to do that and you know the way that material culture and behavior and ritualistic behavior almost is drawn to that strong feeling like a magnet clang clang clang it attaches you know I must do this thing I must paint this thing I must face this thing I must walk this thing [Music] it is a very basic human instinct to organize around our strongest feelings and what could be stronger than mourning the death of a child [Music] [Music] a month had passed and I'd come back to the West London suburbs trying to figure out how a ritual might help broke and his family and friends I'd seen how the taraja hold their funerals not when Medical Science says you're dead but when it feels right emotionally for the living Rogue took me to the football as a fan of Brentford FC he was well aware of the power of ritual to help us face the inevitability of tragedy and defeat [Music] is there a football match on a Saturday afternoon there's nothing better to be comforting about it in a way it's this sort of Institution it keeps death away for another week regularity is a sort of delusion of immortality that we're always going to be another football match there's always going to be another goal it'll come and we don't have to worry about the inevitable but yeah I'm seeing everything now as through the through the filter of imminent Extinction [Applause] you tell that joke because you actually tell them what's better please the one about the cross-eyed George Western medicine is keeping Rogue alive and has given him the power to choose when he dies but for all the post-match bands I sense that Western emotions have some catching up to do and maybe that's what rogue's rite of passage could accomplish roke has decided he wants a ceremony he can be present now if the taraja can separate a death from a funeral why can't we this Gathering of people all the different people that your life has touched and whose lives have touched yours we're quite extraordinary opportunity for them to acknowledge how you've touched their lives you know and as you're saying vice versa you know you you know and there's something really rather lovely about that it's lovely for you to hear it but it's also are you going to be saying something I hope so yes I will have planning to you're really thinking is your last chance mate yeah no I think Christ you know if we could all live I mean that's one of those cliches that they embroider on cushions isn't it like live every day like it's your last you know but you you're doing it I mean I think now is the time to have the conversation that I've I've been thinking about you know you've said you want to have this ceremony now because you feel that the end is coming yes and what are you going are you what are your plans for your death it's a big distant elephant isn't it yes yes an elephant in every corner of the room it never seems very real to me because we have this conversation and it's not that I think he won't do it but I'm like okay we're having this conversation now but he hasn't chosen a date he hasn't reached that stage yes so we're still living this life but when he says I've decided a day to plan towards I think that will be quite different I've taught a long time but three things with a recognize that moment number one will have the courage to acknowledge that it's time on the third level I have the courage to go ahead with a planning you know a year in advance is easy but then when the year becomes six months three months a month two weeks it's not so easy yeah I mean it's not a nice thought because then I I think it's hard for me to imagine life without him do you think you'll communicate any of this to the people there fore tough one that's really hard [Music] the ceremony we're devising for rogue would celebrate a full life well lived the one we're devising for Jordan would be about a life cut brutally short [Music] when I went into Kevin and Allison's front room and saw their shrine I thought wow this is something very raw very real very archetypal so I thought I would make an icon of Jordan I love the idea that worshipers in sort of Orthodox Christianity they kind of kiss the icon the the physical object is very much acknowledged it's not a picture of something else by a skilled artist it is the deity that's a potent thought and it goes back to the sort of dawn of religion and Idols the earliest art of mankind I went back to Middlesbrough on what would have been Jordan's 18th birthday Kevin and Allison wanted to Mark Jordan's life and the senseless way he and so many others are killed on Britain's roads [Music] so we decided to walk a pilgrimage around the streets of the netherfields estate [Music] [Music] foreign [Music] [Music] the kind of Stations of the Cross of Jordan's short life to sort of follow the geography of his 17 years on Earth foreign school never one day off it would be full of flu and he'd still go to school you love Express Jordan you hear you read your favorite swing just a playground yeah yeah this is where useful that's the way we'll always say out our community is your John's Palace it's bigger every day especially on the rope swing yeah away Ali you go on and we'll push you high yeah I did get stuck one day because I wouldn't stop pushing me so how close everything is if this is it just this was Jordan's life you know yes we will never never apart he's my best friend is this the exact spot yeah [Music] I love you no we took a ticket where I would do anything anything to um so please wait [Music] even though we're on a very ordinary estate in a very ordinary town in Britain this is still incredibly numinous and we need reminding of that foreign [Music] doing this pilgrimage today it really brings home to me the ritualistic desire we have it's going to be innate in US somehow you know the way that we try to sort of fumble our way in a very intuitive fashion into making meaning that's what we're doing and it and it seems to come out of The Ether but it doesn't it comes from from us as human animals and the patterns and rhythms of being alive it's here in Middlesbrough it's in sulawazi it's in every society it's a way of framing the big moments tough feelings the joyful feelings marking them so we have memories so we know who we are where we are why we are [Music] you may be wondering what I'm going to do with this and there is a place I'd like to see it and it's here thank you [Music] foreign look see him as a man it's hard to see beyond the breathing tube sometimes when you meet him now four months have passed since I first met Rogan Deidra and rogue's motor neurone disease had Advanced significantly in that time they've set a date for his farewell ceremony and asked me to emcee the event more than any of this he's he's had this sort of forced contemplation of mortality and to a certain extent death has lost its sting so I'm making him a kind of living Funeral Home really I've sort of based it on a sort of classic urn shape but it also is reminiscent of those sort of canopic Pops that you find in kind of Egyptian burials where they would they would mummify the individual organs and things within the pot so there's something kind of resonant about that because what I I'm hoping at the ceremony is that rope's friends and family will all have something to bring you know a kind of physical memory really which which they could put in the vars something small and significant about their relationship with Rogue or his life you know so this is a kind of keepsake for him [Music] [Music] I don't think anybody here would have been to a living funeral before so it has all the potential to be a memorable occasion which is you know in the end is what we're doing we're laying down memories which are made of feeling memories of rope [Music] foreign [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] to a celebration of The Life and Times of rope Ma this is a formal time to witness and celebrate the good relationships that have bound you to Rogue it may be your last chance so to kick things off rogue's wife Deidre [Applause] thank you Grayson and it's absolutely lovely to see each and every one of you here today so I have a couple of things I'd like to contribute to Grayson's amazing memory jar and the first thing I'll be a little bit disappointed if he doesn't remember this but it's an Isom that holds some very special memories for me it is my something blue and I wore us on our wedding day [Laughter] so it is the bridal garter that will go into the memory job but something we we have always had in common is a love of literature so I'd like to Crave Your Indulgence now I'm going to read a short poem that I wrote for rogue and it's called last times remember when you held me in your arms and how I thrilled to be in your embrace the way we walked together through the rain your movements filled with such a Restless Grace I would have braved a greater Deluge then had I but known you'd never walk again remember how you raise the glass to us and lifted up our babies to be kissed the way you drove with pride and confidence that final swim together with the kids I would have lingered in the water then if I had known you'd never swim again we never know when each last time is come until strength fails and one more power is gone then I lament its loss and carry on in Wonder at the person you've become if I had known what lay before us then I'd still go back and be with you again [Applause] I'd now like to invite you all to come and bring your things for the memory jar this is Rox and I'm quoting baby magnet check before that and sexy vest yes Rogue Hope Springs Eternal it's been much worn and each time apparently with utter conviction of its powers I really enjoy it when he's out in the garden having his cigar and I can smell it in our side of the house and it's they've been fantastic Neighbors spent the last 12 years or more maybe going to see Brentford this is my first season ticket with Rogue I'm just picture I think some of us up perfectly me and you in a pub with a bunch of troublemakers smoking cigars sticking two fingers up against the world and that is us this isn't going to sound right but I was always delighted when you came into the hospice I was always looking forward to meeting you and spending time with you and I learned a lot from you mostly I have to say about alcohol and so I thought what I put in the jar was with some beer then I thought perhaps they won't go into the jar so last night I drank them she's been phenomenal with my brother and she's just done so much it can't be put in the chair but it should be in the jar because she's been such a super person super mother super wife I just cannot put into words how much we appreciate I love her for all she's done for work I think that that should be in the jar [Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Music] wow it's kind of thing that the jar is really full and that reflects broken his heart and his life I think and you know when I made it I thought you know have I put too much emphasis on football or beer and I'm thinking now it kind of works here I'd like to welcome the name man himself ladies and gentlemen Rogue Ma but like to thank everybody for coming here I'm pleased that I can share this day with Georgia case and Tom I'm lucky that I've got to know before I died how much people care for me that is a tough subject to speak about however I'd been facing it for nine years it's a credit to all those here that no one ever told me to change the subject when I went on about it which I did a bit sorry about that today I feel I've come to terms with the fact that my life has reached its closing stages that is close the first step to acknowledge is that the time has come then comes the time that family and friends must be told fundamental to this process is a fact but it must be made clear that the decision is mine alone I'm here today says that this time is close I wish to say goodbye I need to know I'm at ease with this decision Michelle Montagna said 450 years ago that if one knows how to live one knows how to die all here has helped me to live everyone consequently I think I now know how to die [Music] I've had a wonderful life when I'm ready I think [Music] thank you [Applause] [Music] foreign [Music] [Music] foreign [Music]

Channel: Perspective

Views: 3,671

Keywords: art exploration, contemporary art, cross-cultural comparisons, death awareness, death positivity, documentary storytelling, emotional healing, end-of-life discussions, family traditions, grief therapy, human connection, life reflections, memorialization techniques, modern rituals, personal growth, reinventing traditions, secular rituals, societal norms, symbolic meanings, visual arts

Id: OGBPrtnuASs

Length: 46min 44sec (2804 seconds)

Published: Sat Oct 29 2022