Dying in the Digital Age - CFP

Call for Papers:

"Dying in the Digital Age"

09-10 June 2012

Bath Royal Literary and Scientific Institute (BRLSI), Bath

http://www.bath.ac.uk/cdas/news/conferences/index.html#cdas2012

Death Cafe

A Cafe to talk about death (and grief) with strangers has been opened in London: what do you think? The more (talking) the better?

"Death Café, in Hackney, claims to be the first of its kind in the UK, inspired by a movement that started in Switzerland.

Founder John Underwood is using his living room for groups to take part in a number of exercises facilitated by a grief specialist."

(from http://www.thisislondon.co.uk/standard/article-23992397-death-is-the-only-subject-at-this-sad-caf.do )

[image from http://mcdeathfreak.blogspot.com/ ]

Twitter: @deathcafe

Human bodies: donation for medicine and research, Launch Seminar, Tuesday 11 October

For those lucky enough to be in London Tuesday 11 October 2011, 14:00-17:00 at the Royal Festival Hall, Belvedere Road, London, SE1 8XX there will be the launch of a report "which considers the ethical issues that arise when people are asked to donate bodily material to benefit others." (http://medicalhumanities.wordpress.com/2011/09/21/human-bodies-donation-for-medicine-and-research-launch-seminar-tuesday-11-october/ )

Not to be missed!

New body 'liquefaction' unit unveiled

A Glasgow-based company has installed its first commercial "alkaline hydrolysis" unit at a Florida funeral home. (http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-14114555 )

This hydrolysis procedure "produces a third less greenhouse gas than cremation, uses a seventh of the energy, and allows for the complete separation of dental amalgam for safe disposal" (ibid.). It is a well know fact that cremation is not as environmentally friendly as one would believe. The struggle for "green" and sustainable ways to dispose of the dead (understandably) continues, but what I find interesting is the focus on rational, clean disposal as opposed to previous priorities (e.g. embalming = the dead looking good; funeral monument = celebration of death; religious rites = religious moral monopoly; and so on).

image from http://watchoutnews.com/body-liquefaction-unit-unveiled/1735/

Infinity Burial and mushroom suits

(Image from: http://infinityburialproject.com/ )

Jae Rhim Lee is "a visual artist, designer, and researcher whose work proposes unorthodox relationships between the mind/body/self and the built and natural environment." (http://zonezerozerostudio.com/bio ). She struggled with the idea that as westerners we deny the aesthetics of death and in particular we use polluting substances (i.e. formaldehyde) to preserve bodies so that they are looking like sleeping. She calls this a "denial" of death.

So she decided to create a suit from mushrooms that not only would decompose without harming the environment, but through the properties of the said mushroom actually cleanse it. This mushroom, called "Infinity Mushroom" will be "a unique strain(s) of fungi that will be trained to decompose bodies and remediate the industrial toxins in bodies." (http://infinityburialproject.com/mushroom ).

The suit in itself also presents challenges: "fitted organic cotton [...] with a crocheted netting on top in a pattern resembling the growth of mushroom mycelium"; the netting is where the spores would be but Jae Rhim Lee is thinking that this might actually not work "because mushroom spores are hard to grow outside of petri dishes", and has an alternative ready: "the next thing I'm thinking of is using gelatin as, basically, a second skin." (read the full interview: http://www.newscientist.com/blogs/culturelab/2011/07/designing-a-mushroom-death-suit.html ).

Seen in the context of the "natural burial movement" (see for example http://naturalburial.coop/), it is interesting to see how the way we dispose of the dead nowadays (or the way some of us wish to dispose of them) is so much influenced by environmental concerns. Low impact on the environment is integrating, and possibly substituting in certain cases, other systems of value around how we bury our dead, such as for example religious concerns relating to blessings, orientation of the body and afterlife; medical concerns about hygiene and pragmatism; or emotional concerns about the body maintaining the essence of the person in its “corpse version”.

I have the strange feeling (un-tested and un-researched, just so you know) that the more our worries about the afterlife decreases (e.g. we develop an attitude such as “if it’s there it’s there”), the more we focus on the here-and-now and therefore worry about the impact of our death on this life. This goes in many directions, such as planning funerals carefully before we die, purchasing graves and coffins, leave videos and messages for our beloved to encourage them in continue with their lives, etc. The natural burial and infinity burial are one aspect of this that has to do with the corpse, this controversial and fascinating entity that we are left with when we die. Can you imagine if we disappeared when we died? Death would be so much less interesting.

Of Art and Healing

Last week I presented on my work on photography around the time of death, and in particular on the use and narrative of photographs in palliative care, at the ‘Narratives of Health and Illness across the Lifespan' (see http://arsmedica.wordpress.com/2011/06/17/conference-on-connection-between-arts-healthcare/ ).

The conference was very interesting and as you can see from the link many papers were on the use and value of arts in medicine. I found particularly compelling this discussion mainly because it focused on what can "art" can do, as opposed to what art is. "Art", and doing art to be more specific, is often taken (and given) has possessing universal value, without questioning the why, which at some extent I can understand and agree with. What I find more interesting though is how medical language of "healing" and the scientific need for "evidence based research" is ubiquitous in the rhetoric of the use of art in a medical setting, as opposed to using a language that has more in common with "inspiration" and "creativity" to break the dryness of the scientific ethos of "if it is not useful it should not be there".

Of course the argument is complex, but for example I greatly value the word "crafting" and opposed to "doing art", which is much harder to define. I have always been a supporter of the "arts and craft" movement and not very fond of the concept of "fine arts" as an untouchable, sublime and cryptic endeavour. After all, crafting is more socialist than doing fine arts.

This is not only because "doing art" is hard to define while "crafting" relatively easier, but because one is associated more with elites and Knowledge (capital letter intended) while the other with experience and learning.

I think if one supports arts, one should stop worrying if they are useful or not, and in fact support them more when they are completely and evidently useless. Also, arts is not about "beauty", it is more, much more than that, and in that sense its power for healing is equal to its power to corrupt, hurt and destroy, something rarely mentioned when discussing it.

"FUNERAL DIVAS: CREATING SPACE FOR WOMEN IN THE FUNERAL INDUSTRY"

http://bit.ly/is1Fv6 is an interesting post I have just been reading on "Funeral Divas" (image above), a Funeral Diva being "a strong, confident and successful woman who works in the funeral industry. She is not ashamed of her career! She is proud to serve hurting families!serve hurting families!"

Also to note the calendar of "Men of Mortuaries" (image below) in the same website (@sociologicalimages): http://bit.ly/aw5EZr

In the blog where I found both links the discussion around both images is that people who work in the funeral industry try to "humanize themselves so as to avoid the stigmas often associated with their jobs". This is already interesting per se, but as blogger Gwen Sharp notices there are also interesting gender dynamics at place, because funeral directors are traditionally and mainly men. Sharp refers also to an article written on The Christian Science Monitor / March 23, 2004 (http://bit.ly/i9gIq0 ) where is discussed how the gender balance is changing in the industry, with more female studying to become funeral director.

Interestingly, this new interest in this job is understood as being connected with the profession become more concerned with grief (as opposed to "mourning" one would assume), making it automatically into a more vocational profession and therefore more "appealing" (or suited) to women. The gender balance change in this industry therefore, while seemingly being a way of strengthening gender equality, conceals and reinforces traditional western stereotypes related to emotions and gender role (see for example Lutz "Unnatural Emotions" 1998).