When You Die… Workshop and Book Signing

Oakland-based conceptual artist Lindsay Tunkl, is pleased to present Parting Practice: Rituals for Endings and Failure. This multifaceted event coincides with the release of the artist’s latest book, When You Die You Will Not Be Scared To Die, a work of conceptual art that reframes death as something to look forward to instead of fight against. To celebrate the release of the new book, a group workshop and book signing will take place at E.M. Wolfman General Interest Bookstore on July 14th from 2-4:30pm. The artist will also be conducting 50-minute one-on-one performance sessions at other locations in the bay area over the course of three days (July 15, July 21 and July 22) where volunteer participants can connect around their fears of death and dying.

Lindsay Tunkl’s artistic practice has been described as absurd, over-emotional, healing, and tragic. In an attempt to understand the particular experience of the human life cycle during the Anthropocene (the societal moment that our species began contributing to its own demise) Tunkl uses her art practice as a way to connect and share in the heartbreaking realities we all inhabit in this contemporary moment. Drawing from her own irrational fears of the apocalypse, death and intimacy, the artist has found that these topics – the things that scare us the most – are a platform for profound human connection and closeness.
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Parting Practice sprung from Pre Apocalypse Counseling, a series of interactive, one-on-one performances that took place in an SUV and lead participants through conversations, psychological and physical exercises, and visualizations in order to examine their emotional connection to the probable or improbable apocalypse (more than 100 sessions have taken place). Out of that project came two recently published works: Origins and Endings: A Divination Book and Inkblot Card Deck and the small book of meditations, When You Die You Will Not Be Scared To Die. With a tender and humorous hand, each of these works is an encounter that offers the viewer an opportunity to have a reflexive experience with their emotions within a world that is more often than not, heartbreaking.