All tidied up: about worms and other weirdos after death.

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When: 27 October 2026 Time: 19:30–21:30 Where: Metabolic boat Admission: free or by voluntary donation Registration: reserve a spot here Register here

All tidied up: about worms and other weirdos after death.

How do we, as humans, relate to the ecosystem after death? How does our body take part in it? And what would it feel like to become prey to another animal as part of the ecosystem, rather than living in control as we humans are used to?

——– Bring a plain, cotton, ‘almost-dead’ T-shirt or sweater ——-.

Every day, life reveals itself to us in all its scents and colours. In people, animals, trees, flowers, light and water. It blooms and withers, grows and breaks down, germinates and decays. Everything is constantly moving between coming into being and disappearing. Yet we humans have increasingly distanced ourselves from this natural cycle. We would rather talk about life than about dying, and would rather look away from what happens to a body after someone has died. What do we actually know about dying? Or about a dead body? About what happens underground after we are buried? Which little creatures help us on our way towards becoming part of a greater whole, and where do they come from? This series of evenings is not a search for answers, but a space for questions and change. For different ways of looking. Because perhaps, precisely where something ends, another story begins.

On the programme:

• Marijn Bax, a Ceuvel resident, explores the physical relationship between humans and space through her work as a photographer and artist. Her current focus is on our relationship with the soil. Starting from the question of how our bodies become part of the ecosystem after death, she invites us to reconsider the position we take for granted as humans. A preview of the collaborative video work that Marijn and Susanne Duijvestein created this summer during a mini-residency at Huis te Vraag will serve as the starting point for the evening.
  
• Susanne Duijvestein, ritual designer, educator and facilitator in processes of saying goodbye, and founder of Stichting Veraarden.
  
• Thijs de Zeeuw is Speaker for the Living for De Ceuvel’s Zoöp. He is also a landscape architect and NatureOptimist, designing for the more-than-human world at places including ARTIS. In his work, he tries to make space for other perspectives: what does the world look like when, instead of humans, another animal becomes the starting point? Or when, within a Zoöp, you represent not the Living but the Dead?
  
• Hermen van de Waal, also a Ceuvel resident, photographer and filmmaker, and affiliated with the Bee Foundation, will recite a poem about fungi.
  
• Sieto Noordhoorn is a graphic designer who likes to work at the intersection of art, society and ecology. Through his work, he challenges us to look differently at how we relate to the systems we are part of. He will close the evening with a workshop. We will print the tiny organisms that help decompose our bodies after death onto the old T-shirts we have brought with us. A playful yet confronting way to get acquainted with the beings with whom, after our lives, we may enter into a very special relationship.

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