The Posthumous World: the Post-life Ecology of the Artists Body

How can we imagine the world we will leave behind after we die? The Posthumous World is an interdisciplinary research project about death, dying and our relationship with the planet. At its centre will be a new artwork – a scientifically accurate, visual simulation of a human body being reabsorbed back into the environment after burial. The body in question will be the artist’s own. Taking the form of a computer animated, durational sculpture, we will see a radical metamorphosis of the corpse and the end of its human identity. This essay sketches out its possible implications for contemporary practices of death.