Deadly serious /
artful Mortality
A DEATH ACTIVIST SYMPOSIUM :: OCT 15, 2025 / 7-9pm
This evening brings together cultural commentators and death activists to examine mortality and share their thoughts on its power and impact in our contemporary moment—as well as propose new ways of engaging the premise and practice of our death from more sustainable and constructive perspectives. There is a lot of “new-thinking” in contemporary death practices and visionaries who are developing models that re-imagine our death to work better for individuals and their supportive communities of friends and family.
New examples of “family caretaking,” ritualized embalming, natural corpse composting and land conservation burials, engagement legacy park/memorials and other “green burials” focus on integrating sustainable practices and legacy-honoring between living human beings and the spirits and memories of the departed. See how the presenters grapple with the concept of our “decayging” and present new life—& DEATH!—affirming models of addressing, honoring, architecting our own mortality.
Featuring these PRESENTERS:
CIANNA STEWART - @dyingkindness / dyingkindness.com
MARK MILLER - @markmiller1201 / markmillerarchitecture.com
“Spirits Abound” / photo of a forest installation, #352 Kashimagawa, by Tokihiro Sato, 1998
Including these TOPICS:
Cianna Stewart, Dying Kindness Founder, with a sampling of topics, 2025
Your death is not only yours
We can transform our understanding of our own deaths by considering its impact on others, and breaking down our assumptions about cultural norms and expectations.
As a death educator, Cianna leads classes, hosts podcasts and counsels individuals and their given or chosen families on various emotional, legal, institutional and social issues, including decisions, questions and options confronting those embarking on their end-of-life journey.
“Assuming the people who love you will be grieving your death,
that’s the worst time to force them to make decisions. Planning
ahead is an act of love, a dying kindness.” – Cianna Stewart
Presenter’s BIO:
Cianna P. Stewart is the founder of Dying Kindness, a project for people who are going to die someday. Her goal as a death educator is to help people make key decisions now in order to be kinder to those they’ll leave behind. Cianna has experience as a caregiver, worked in HIV advocacy & care throughout the 1990s, and has generally had a life with a lot of death in it, both of the expected kind and not. She draws on all this life (& death) experience and much more to support the practical and emotional realities of planning for death and dying.
Mark Miller, Spirit Park Developer, with inviting park architecture, 2025
Re-Imagining Cemetery / Spirit Parks
Most Western cemeteries fail to constructively honor the dead and engage the living; in them form is really not following function very well. One isn’t sure how to interact with a tombstone, there is no place to sit, stay, to commune with the dead. As a manifestation of the values of our American culture and our isolating relationship to the business of death, cemeteries are not welcoming, inviting places; they are certainly not a place for the living.
My lecture will discuss what humans need for helpful grieving, memorialization and communal celebration of lives passed; and some compelling ideas and new features that would transform the old models of cemetery into what I like to call, Spirit Parks; places of opportunity for people to honor the dead, encouraging connection and participation with anthropomorphically designed elements that encourage physical and spiritual connection for our human form and social relationships.
Presenter’s BIO:
Mark A. Miller designs award winning “net zero passive houses” which run year-round on energy from the sun. Passive house, as a building philosophy, reduces energy demands of the building by up to 85%; improves occupant comfort and health with superior indoor air quality and eliminates the gas line, helping to reduce the building sector’s contributions to climate change. Mark is a member of The Passive House Alliance Chicago and was Executive Director of the National Alliance for a two year term. He has been a longtime student of Japanese martial arts and other forms of moving meditation. He brings a spiritual awareness to the experience of—and designing of—architectural spaces. Besides architecture, mark is a proud father, husband, musician, motorcycle tourist, martial artist and an empathetic soul.