Michelle Ellsworth

(Boulder, CO)

Memento Mori in the Dreamatorium

Access: CART (Communication Access Realtime Translation) captioning will be provided at this event.

DESCRIPTION

Michelle Ellsworth’s Memento Mori in the Dreamatorium explores death preparation and posthumous logistics, offering practical tools for post-survival. Rooted firmly in reality, each method in the work has been rigorously tested on human subjects, ensuring safety, effectiveness, and usability. Ellsworth confronts the often-overlooked complexities of mortality by addressing key aspects of the death process, including choreography, end-of-life care, documentation, replacement objects, death beds, and estate planning. The “Dreamatorium” is the site and core of the labor—a portable, micro-human-scale, multifunctional, open-floor-planned experimental death space designed to help individuals rehearse the emotional, physical, and logistical realities of death. By engaging with the inevitability of death in a controlled, tangible, and portable way, Ellsworth hopes to habituate herself and viewers to our only guaranteed birthright: death.

Inspired by the failure of the death prep for her mother’s passing in 2024, Ellsworth attempts, once again, to solve problems for herself and her community using only dance and household objects. Solving the question articulated by Anthony de Mello, “Is there life before death?” Ellsworth does emotional and physical math to find answers. In a society that often avoids or inadequately addresses the realities of death, Memento Mori in the Dreamatorium proposes solutions for individuals to confront and navigate life’s “sure thing.” Collaborators include: Melisande Osnes, Bruce Miller, Ben Donehower, Priscillia Cohan, Kate Bashore, and Brian Rogers.

ABOUT THE ARTIST

Michelle Ellsworth co-mingles technology, carpentry, and quilting with dance in an attempt to choreograph high-functioning coping strategies for geopolitical (and personal) phenomena. A professor at the University of Colorado Boulder, Ellsworth is currently making a 7-inch recording with drummer Sean Meehan, creating a new dance for wood camera, and starting her next quilt, Quilt Complex #9.

Collaborators: Shane Riley, Melisande Osnes, Bruce Miller, Ben Donehower, Priscillia Cohan, Kate Bashore, and Brian Rogers