All tidied up: about worms and other weirdos after death.
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How do we as humans relate to the ecosystem after death? How does our body participate in this? And how would it feel to be prey to another animal as part of the ecosystem, instead of living in control as we humans are used to?
>>>>> Please bring a plain, cotton (‘almost-dead’) T-shirt or sweater <<<<<<.
Every day, life reveals itself to us in all its vibrant forms and colours. In people, animals, trees, flowers, light, and water. It blooms and wilts, grows and breaks down, sprouts and decays. Everything is in constant motion between coming into existence and disappearing. Yet we (humans) have grown increasingly distant from this self-evidence. We prefer to talk about life rather than dying, and we tend to look away from what happens to a body after someone passes away. What do we actually know about dying? Or about a deceased body? What happens underground after we are buried? Which tiny creatures help us on the path toward a larger whole, and where do they come from? This series of evenings is not a search for definitive answers, but rather a space for questions and change, and for alternative ways of seeing. Because perhaps right there, where something ends, another story begins.
On the program:
- Marijn Bax, Ceuvel resident, explores the physical relationship between humans and space through her work as a photographer and artist. Currently, her focus lies on our relationship with the soil. Starting from the question of how our body becomes part of the ecosystem after death, she invites us to reconsider our taken-for-granted position as humans. Tonight’s starting point will be a preview of the collaborative video work Marijn and Susanne Duijvestein created this summer during a mini-residency at Huis te Vraag (a historic cemetery in Amsterdam, now a unique green space where nature, art, and decay converge).
- Susanne Duijvestein, ritual designer, educator, and farewell guide, founder of Stichting Veraarden.
- Thijs de Zeeuw is Speaker for the Living for Zoöp De Ceuvel. He is also a landscape architect and NatureOptimist who designs for the non-human at places like Artis Zoo. In his work, he tries to create space for other perspectives: what does the world look like if you take another animal—instead of humans—as a starting point? Or if you represent the Dead instead of the Living for a Zoöp?
- Hermen de Waal, also a Ceuvel resident, photographer, filmmaker, and affiliated with the Bee Foundation, will recite a poem about fungi.
- Sieto Noordhoorn is a graphic designer, owner of Stampij, and co-founder of the Eddy the Eagle Museum. Working at the intersection of art, society, and ecology, he uses design, art, and workshops to challenge us to view our relationship with the systems we are part of in a different light. He will close the evening with a workshop: we will print the tiny organisms that help decompose our bodies after death onto our old, brought-from-home T-shirts. A playful yet confronting way to get acquainted with the creatures with whom we might enter a very special relationship after life.
