SECOND RESEARCH PHASE: NARROWING DOWN THE RESEARCH QUESTION

Why?

Starting from a more open interrogation, which was to question how "we" deal with grief, through my research I came to the conclusion that I had to turn the lens towards myself. This is because I understood that the experience of bereavement is strictly intimate, personal and subject to wide and varied interpretations.
Each of us has to face this issue sooner or later, but everyone has their own way of living it.

How?
Elizabeth Kübler-Ross, On Death and Dying, 1969 - I deepened the definition of the five stages of grief: denial, anger, bargaining, depression, and acceptance.
David Kessler, Elizabeth Kübler-Ross ,"On Grief and Grieving” : made clear that these stages are not to be considered as a manual, each can be experienced in a casual and non-sequential way, "they are tools to help us frame and identify what we may be feeling."
David Kessler, “Finding Meaning”: defining meaning to be the sixth stage of grief. I started to question if this is what I am already trying to do, without having to neglect the other stages of grief, which I am simultaneously experiencing.

Practical references:

Adrian Paci’s “Playing with the Pain”: stages three different scenes that refer to his imagination and to traditions and funeral ceremonies in Albania, his country of birth. He was attracted by the human need to build a story of fiction or a choreography around traumatic events of our lives.

in the work of Adrian Paci, I find inspiration in staging something that could help me bring my father into the present, fill the void that prevails in me today.

Jennifer Loeber "Left Behind" : uses the archiving technique for a project dedicated to her deceased mother, combining an image with a specific object.

in the work of Jennifer Loeber,I recognise a comforting process, which comes natural to me. The idea of creating an archive that helps me keeping my father's memory vivid and present.

Research question :
How do I experience the grief for the loss of my father?
Finding Meaning to honor his memory

What I am doing:

- making an archive of photos, objects and sounds related to my father and/or his relationship with me.

- using the songs he used to send me and recording them again, the idea is to sing along with him and use the recorder + microphone in a way that creates the effect of us in the same room, singing simultaneously.

What I will do:

- next week I will be going to Rome, where my father lived his all life and last days. I am planning to continue my archive there.

- make new material: videos and photos in the places that remind me of him.

- considering of having other voices in my project as interviews(maybe family members)