a.r. keiner

Alphabetized experiences in grief from “ADVICE I GIVE TO THE NEWLY BEREAVED” to “WHAT NOT TO SAY”

Readable pdf at www.issuu.com/arkeiner

Series of drawings from images that only exist digitally. Bringing digital images ephemera in to the physical world

Archive version 2: Installed in an office complete with ringing land line and functioning typewriter. Not pictured: bookcase with artists book and other ephemera. Desk drawers filled with crumpled letters.

Nice to Meet You, Mme. President: Archive from the Dead Baby Club 2012- 2019: 2021.

Shortly after the death of my son in 2012, I became a hub for other bereaved families and their communities. I assemble what I called “Grief Teams,” helping families through the first few days, weeks, months after the death of a child. I advise on meal trains, fundraising, how to interview the modern mortician, and the details of caring for the dead like which morticians and funeral homes in Los Angeles or North Carolina will let you be present for the cremation of your child and why that is valuable. I facilitate the family adornments of caskets. I’ve drawn dying children in hospice and their families.

A conversation with a friend about my early actions in the community lead to a moment of gallows humor and the moniker de-facto “President of Dead Baby Club.” This has stuck.

This work is a direct result of this social practice. Here is a fully functioning archive staged in the imagined National Headquarters of Dead Baby Club, USA. Every aspect of this grief can be touched, read, smelled. At its most simple, this archive explores the before and the after: here were our families before our children died and here we are after. Here is a physical object that existed before my son died and here it is after.

Yet what is captured in “Nice to Meet You..”. is less linear. The boxes hold Polaroids, letters between the recently bereaved, small drawings, numerous book projects derived from my social practice, photographs of my partner and I before and after our son’s death.The impact of the piece is dependent on the viewer’s personal experience with grief and willingness to participate with each object; opening the box, the rolodex, the blanket, the books.

The most provocative piece within the archive is a text piece encapsulated in a rolodex with an alphabetized account of the experiences of the president of Dead Baby Club. This includes the text from What Not to Say: Volume 1, a 2017 comic book accounting horrible things said by well-meaning folk.

This diagram delineates the archive reimagined for the age of Covid and social distancing. Originally conceived as a 1980s era office complete with ringing landline, and then for an install as a 8’x4’x4’ u-shaped cubicle, this pandemic iteration allows for a safer interaction.

And at this point, safety is vital to the work. It prevents an individual from joining 2.16 million dead from COVID-19: 4,101 of whom died in the US just yesterday (1/27/2021, New York Times). I think of these families must grieve at a distance of at least six feet, unable to touch their dead, or hold their loved ones. And then what? How do we possibly make visible the grief? How do we possibly connect while avoiding contagion maintaining physical distance from the living as we attempt to comfort the loss?

The Pandemic Install: As the act of riffling through each object is limited due to social distance measures, the contents of each item will be projected above the desk using digital video and a slide projector. The viewer gets a guided tour of each object within the archive. A live-stream of the install will allow access to the piece and will be punctuated by the sounds of the slide carousel, the landline, the spin of the rolodex, the vibration of the phone. I considered youtube, facebook/ig live, and discord for the livestream, but settled on a zoom link as the zoom meeting is the Site of our Time. With cameras on, each viewer will be viewed by others as the meeting/viewing is taking place. I am attracted to the voyeurism of the archive as each participant is as visible as the live stream itself. In the event of in-person interaction, the installation continues to be streamed implicating each live viewer into the digital space mimicking the fish bowl of grief.

-A.R. Keiner, January 2021