Amid a global collapse of biodiversity that is taking its toll on the mental health of individuals and human communities, a question resurfaces that, millennium after millennium, has never ceased to be fundamental: how are we to face loss? In 2023, Vinciane Despret (Les morts à l'œuvre) proposed fashioning a mourning of vital insistence: a mourning which, rather than enjoining us to forget, includes the dead within the community of the living. The aim is to remember with the dead, who in turn take part in tending the bonds that tie the living to one another. In many traditional societies, the ritual practices of mourning likewise served to strengthen the cohesion of the community.

Held as part of Demeure, the exhibition presenting artists' works within, and in dialogue with Pantin Cemetery, this symposium sets out to approach the funerary question through the lens of political ecology. Taking as its starting point the largest cemetery in Europe (home to as many graves as animal, plant and microscopic forms of life, and host to a variety of funeral rites drawn from many cultural traditions), this day invites us to reflect on the ties of interdependence that bind the living to the dead. It will examine the ecological impact of funeral rites and of the ritual practices of mourning, with particular attention to emerging funerary practices that approach death as a process of transformation capable of regenerating both the soil and the social body.

Our guests, drawn from academic, activist and community circles, will shed light on ways of restoring the bodies of the deceased to an ecosystem in which they take part, organically and biologically, but also politically and socially. In so doing, new avenues of thought may emerge towards reclaiming our relationship to death, be it human or more-than-human.

Conceived and organised by Tilhenn Klapper
With Firyel Abdeljaouad, Giovanni Aloi, the duo -h-, Vincent Lecompte, Magali Molinié, Grégory Nieuviarts, Marine Prunier, Léa Rivière and Mathilde Tahar.

— 9:30 am: Welcome
— 9:45 am: Introduction by Tilhenn Klapper

I. UNDERSTANDING AND TRANSFORMING CEMETERIES

— 10:00–10:30 am: Firyel Abdeljaouad, Curator of the Pantin Parisian Cemetery. Nothing Important Dies.
— 10:30–11:15 am: Magali Molinié, lecturer and researcher in psychology, Université Paris 8 and Cornell University. Making Commons with Our Dead, Thickening Our Milieus.
> 11:15–11:30 am: Coffee break

II. REINVENTING OUR FUNERAL RITUALS

— 11:30 am–12:30 pm: Grégory Nieuviarts, co-founder of the Rennes funeral cooperative, in conversation with Marine Prunier, artist. Moderated by Tilhenn Klapper.
— 12:30–1:15 pm: Duo -h-, artists and activists. Grafted Rituals for the Living and the Dead.
> 1:15–2:15 pm: Lunch break
— 2:15–3:15 pm: Léa Rivière, artist and poet. Learning to Grieve.

III. RETHINKING NON-HUMAN DEATHS

— 3:15–4:00 pm: Mathilde Tahar, researcher in the philosophy of biology, UCL. Mourning and Bonds Among Non-Humans.
> 4:00–4:15 pm: Coffee break
— 4:15–5:15 pm: Vincent Lecompte, artist and lecturer-researcher in aesthetics, ECLLA, Université de Saint-Étienne. Through the Eye of the Dead Animal: A Prosopopoeia.
— 5:15–6:00 pm: Giovanni Aloi, writer and art lecturer, School of the Art Institute of Chicago. The Secret Death of Plants. (Talk in English)

Unless otherwise indicated, all contributions will be delivered in French.

On 27 October 2026, from 10am to 6pm
Auditorium 250, Centre des Colloques, Campus Condorcet — Place du Front populaire, 93300 Aubervilliers
Free registration

With the support of le19m, POUSH Grand Partner.