FiLaGrie
The Fine Layers of Grief
The FiLaGrie Endeavour is a multi-disciplinary project in development utilising narrative storytelling that challenges misconceptions of grief. Centring around the core story of a woman’s experience that challenges the linear paradigms of the ‘five stages of grief’, the work will be shared in an interactive online art-space that securely captures audience responses.
Play
Talk
Think
​Creativity provides meaningful opportunities for individuals to explore and develop insight into their own experience of complex grief and loss, yet current cultural paradigms around grief are built upon misunderstandings of the grief process; that it is linear, that it ‘completes’, and that it is an experience that inevitably isolates individuals from others and their community. This promotes shame, disconnection and ultimately interferes with an individual's ability to recover meaningfully in the community.
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FiLaGrie aims to transform the cultural conversation; in this project, we will develop a narrative film that is accessed via a purpose-built online art-space; here, users interact, reflect and connect in safe, de-identified and creative ways. The group of core artists will consult with experts within the health and arts space throughout, and using this core artwork, we will look to expand into other multi-modal explorations with relevant collaborators and stakeholders within the market. The long-term aim of the FiLaGrie endeavour is to build a community that is a safe space for individuals to develop insight around their grief using creativity.
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The core artwork that forms the basis of this project depicts the experience of one woman as she moves through the ‘5 stages of grief’ (denial, anger, bargaining, sadness and acceptance), ultimately subverting expectations of grief 'resolving' by returning on day 6 to the first stage, beginning a sequence in which her grief is by turns both comically unpredictable and poignantly non-linear. Perhaps grief unfolds in layers rather than discrete stages, and we are invited to learn how to integrate these layers into our ongoing reality. The cause of her grief is never specified; grief itself is the focus, not the source of it.
Though highly individualised, grief is ultimately universal, and this should connect us to each other rather than isolate us... after watching this short film, individuals may be able to manipulate the events of the film to create new sequences, interact with reflective and creative modules that allow them to connect to what is universal about their own experience.
