конструктор смерти

"We often pay off death symbolically in order not to think of it – by giving money for charity," helping dying children and animals.

Because death is a primitive fear and “no living human can be saved from this dark shadow”.

humanitarian knowledge, which is mainly concerned with everything connected with death, dying and immortality.

We consider that it’s necessary and important to speak about death. Especially in these terrible "times, when we live in 2022."

To think about the last will when you are ready is normal if it happens either at 20 or at 50;

To speak about how to be buried;

To grieve as you can without being guilty for some “unusual emotions”.

Speaking about death we are speaking about life**.

We organized this online exhibition together with Liza Svetlova, a death studies activist, art-curator, Big death conf founder, cofounder of Constructor microinstitution (together with Arina Dakina) to talk with you visually about death.

**big death conf – slogan

*Irvin Yalom. Looking into the sun. Life without fear of death.

Liza Svetlova

@museum_deva

visual anthropologist, death studies activist, curator and big death conf founder

«It’s considered that death is tabooed. We see it in films, news and Youtube everyday. The life of a film character is worthy of nothing. Death is lightweight and valueless.

To be honest? I hate such texts about death, though there is certainly a grain of truth in them. I want to believe that death is a territory of freedom. That’s why death is written about, sung, danced, played, taken photos, proving the main thing – death belongs to all of us without exception..

The «Constructor microinstitution» and «Boiling Point» magazine collected visual artists who are ready to accept it in some way or other and say personally about themselves and from themselves, make their private public, break notorious stigmas about the right and wrong, permissible, shameful and shameless in understanding of death. By the way, this very approach realises one more basis of death and dying culture – a possibility to be spoken about. Taking pictures is also a language and a way of speaking, but due to no evident reasons this function of expressing itself through visual aids remains far from use. Photography as means of expression is often ignored when death and dying is concerned preferring means of painting, theatre or films.

It may be explained by that fact that the nature of photography is inseparably connected with death. Even new living in the world of photoshop we feel authenticity of photography as a document, though illusory. «If it is taken a photo, it’s real in comparison with being painted, shown on the stage or performed.» We chose the projects with a chance to overcome this psycho- visual barrier for this exhibition and give freedom to photography as a tool of speaking about death.

Liza Svetlova

@museum_deva

visual anthropologist, death studies activist, curator and big death conf founder

ROOTS

Press the block to see the photos

Photographer and visual artist from Saint Petersburg. Focuses attention on research of the phenomenon of nostalgia, identity, poetisizing everyday life through object photography, self- portrait and naïve photo-culture.

Ira Brana

digital photography, 2021

Our roots are branchy, they throb, interlace, tear off and meet again, if you touch your cheek you will feel one and the same granite bits licking panel fronts. Purple paint reaches your ankles. Slate’s ripples on the top. Bench’s frame under your feet with marigolds growing through.

ROOTS is a part of the same-name project, which researches memory of a home-cradle, using collective architecturally typical for the 60-s image of the block of flats. This memory can be cared and kept alive, but it may be systematically dug out and buried deeper.

It’s warm May, 2019. I am sitting in the kitchen with my legs crossed, slowly drinking my morning coffee. Telephone is ringing. I'm taking the receiver. This is my Dad, he’s very laconic:«Grandpa has died». Grandma came to waken him up and asked with a little bit of jeer: «Gena, are you alive?» But he didn’t answer.

We were not very close with him, but recently listening to my Mum’s delightful stories I didn’t give up hope to make friends with him. I even started thinking how we would be having a heart- to-heart talk. We would sit together in the kitchen some day. I would be sitting near the window, he with his back to the fridge. We would open a bottle of wine for an easy start and would be making friends. But I had been thinking about it for too long.

For no one

Press the album to see the photo

Interdisciplinary artist from Saint Petersburg. Works in photography, video, performance and installation. Writes scenarios and works as an actor. Participates in hybrid art & science workshops in ITMO-university. In 2021 graduated from Saint Petersburg Institute of Culture, cinema-photoarts department. At present is studying in magistracy, Stieglitz Academy of Art and Design.

Anna Palchik

polaroid, album

The project For no one was filmed after half a year after the funeral. Beginning with mourning and sorrow of the loss I have been coming to release and light being in contact with my roots.

And it’s quite normal that after the funeral banquet you have to meet up with smiling people, drinking champagne in the name of arts. Here life is flickering on tips of fingers. Blow off and it will vanish.

The last

the Earth

days on

A sharp feeling of the loss of reality together with a thrusted feelings of a close death became a moving force for creation of this series of photos. The project was noted at Brurring the Linesin 2020.

The last days on the Earth project was born in the period of lockdown in the spring of 2020. It was caused by the phenomenon of infodemia, when information currents being sometimes controversial filled the routine and started to build their own media-reality.

From Murmansk region, lives and works in Saint Petersburg. Took up photography more than 10 years ago. Participant of various group exhibitions in Russia and abroad. Uses photography in its different manifestations, from digital images to photo-sculpture in her art practice.

Kaati Puolakinen

photo, 2020

Ekaterina Judaeva

Scientific communicator, biologist, researcher of Art and Science Center of ITMO-university. Sphere of interests: scientific theatre, digital humanities, recomprehension of archives materials using the tools of new media, ethics, aesthetics of scientific illustrations.

The author offers a dialogue with the scientist in the only available form – through soil. A visitor to the exhibition can send Dokuchaev his/her message in the language of flowers popular in the XIX-th century, planting a seed from the offered list in the soil taken from the scientist’s grave.

Scientific communicator, biologist, researcher of Art and Science Center of ITMO-university. Sphere of interests: scientific theatre, digital humanities, recomprehension of archives materials using the tools of new media, ethics, aesthetics of scientific illustrations.

The installation represents a platform for communication with a great scientist, founder of Russian soil science, professor Vasily Vasilyevich Dokuchaev, who died more than a century ago. This is somewhat of a memory altar in the centre of which is a scientist’s portrait surrounded by the works about soil-books and articles.

ev’s soil

Talks on

Dokucha-

Get familiar with meanings of flowers in the flower language

Choose a seed and say about your choice

installation

Send your message to Dokuchaev

Visual artist, curator. Graduate of Josef Buchstein Institute of Modern Arts, photo-department. Works with different media forms: photography, sculpture, collage, installation. Her projects are addressed to the themes of memory, space, materiality.

Photography

Family

jewelry

Click on people or diamonds to see photos

Natalya Drachinskya

The project models a situation when the technology of creating ritual diamonds has existed for many years. And after many dead ancestors jewelry remains, making a part of family archives. They can be touched. This way actin affirms natural meaning and tactual feeling of death.

The world and the society are constantly changing. Recently a technology has appeared which allows to create diamonds out of cremation ashes. This possibility to keep memory of a dead man arouses different feelings and ideas. The words of the Russian classic: «No, I won’t die, my soul in the cherished lyre / my remains will outlive and decay will be avoided…» acquire a new meaning.

photo

Our quests are people from different spheres who are united by interest to death: psychologists, philosophers, anthropologists, forensic experts, owners of undertaker’s offices, doalas of the end of life and other wonderful specialists.

Death trick – podcast is a project created to speak about death in all its forms. We consider our mission to make the theme of death common for talking, to help listeners find answers to quite different questions (foolish ones included), as well as make life brighter keeping in mind its ending.

Moderators of the podcast are Maria Kokova, a psychologist and religion expert, and Maria Mironos, a linguist and culture manager.

trick

Death

Creators of the museum of memories in the open air called We lived on the Trekutyevskoe cemetery tell us about their project. By the way, the girls presented the guide book of the Trekutyevskoe cemetery as a result of their work on November 27, 2022

«Cemetry story»

Guests: Daria Novikova and Vlada Neradovskaya, Tyumen

Moderator of a Moscow death café speaks about those who come to meet up at the project, to talk about death and how love can be born in such an atmosphere.

«Transhumanism, café and dead bodies in cosmic space»

Guest: Galina Sidorova, Moscow

Psychologist and lover of Japan speaks how it has become possible in this country to vanish from everyday life, to turn over a new leaf in another place under a new name as well as who and why needs such an option.

«Karosi, anime and social suicide»

Guest: Vasily Lunev, Georgia

«Soup, towels and the nose of the dead»

Guest: Sergey Minvaleev, Karelia

The ethnologist speaks about peculiarities of Karelian burial traditions, mixing of folk beliefs with Christian ceremonies as well as his own experience of participation in farewell sacraments.

podcast

Dasha Iukkanen

Having visited Saint Petersburg some years ago I was surprised that no streets in the centre of the city were cleaned from snow. When people think about winter, they imagine snowflakes, skis, the New Year, forgetting about slush, ice and icicles. In the ceramic newspaper there are collected quotations about icicles from real editions. Who must be in charge of streets full of snow?

chamotte, glaze, overglaze painting, 2020

Press the newspaper to see the project

snowing

News: It’s

The artist suggests thinking over a good death covered by a rug in a comfy atmosphere. What’s the most important to be done before? In 2016 a Belgian writer and developer Peter Hinchens published A Protocol for dying on his site. He had been diagnosed cancer for 5 years by this time. At first the illness retreated, but then came back leaving him no chances. According to his own experience Peter Hinchens wrote an article with recommendations to the dying and their relatives.

Due to quite understandable reasons Peter Hinchens outlined in his article that he would not make an inquiry about comment, inviting to a personal discussion (RFC). But he asked everybody who would like to share his history to write comments on his site. A viewer can share his ideas in feedback – anonymously or not. The stories will be visualized in the author’s animation when the exhibition is over.

Bob leaves

Press the computer to read A Protocol for dying

Press the envelope to read the article’s introduction

Alice

тавляет

боб ос-

installation, 2020

Sasha Kovalyova

Finished Free Workshops Art-school of the Moscow Museum of Modern Art and studied multimedia story-telling in the Gonzo-design studio in Saint Petersburg. She also studied basics of iconography and history of eastern Christian art in the Russian Orthodox Art-school Trinity.

Death studies researcher and artist. As an artist Sasha is interested in problems of keeping memory of lonely, stigmatized, marginal groups, in problems of euthanasia, interaction of death and technologies.

Please, be comfortable, have a sit-down without slippers, cover yourself in a rug. If you want, eat a biscuit.

Below there you’ll find the text of the article by a Belgian writer and IT-developer Peter Hinchens. In 2016 he published an article based on his own experience (A Protocol for dying). In information science protocols usually describe processors of data transfer according to certain rules. Symbolic Bob and symbolic Alice are also usual signs in IT science*.

Peter Hinchens had been diagnosed cancer for 5 years by the moment of publication. At first the illness retreated, but then came back without any chances for him. Based on his experience he wrote an article with recommendations for dying and for the relatives.

I do not fully agree with some of these recommendations. The protocol represents pieces of advice of a very whole- hearted, soberminded, well-to-do person of the Western culture. But the most important thing for me is to SPEAK, to verbalize ideas and listen to others people’s thoughts. And this document is about it, this very opportunity of having a talk.

I suggest reading and thinking about what a good death means to you in a comfy atmosphere sitting in an armchair under a warm rug.

Pay attention to a few passages about euthanasia. The author is a Belgian, it explains partly why he speaks about it so openly and categorically. This question doesn’t sound so simple when there is no choice – when there are no hospices with proper medical care.

What is not advisable to talk to Bob? Or to cry? May it be better to grow a tree instead of writing the last will to university? And is it necessary to be close to somebody?

Your thoughts, stories and presentations can be written in feedback after reading A Protocol. I will make a short film, as author’s animation based on the collected stories.

If you want to see this film or to be mentioned in captions or in the Net, please, leave your contacts.

If you want you may be anonymous.

*
Notes of the editor to the article by S. Eremeeva “Ars Moriendi in the digital epoch "Archeology of Russian Death. 2018, No 6.

*Alice and Bob are symbolic names, often used in articles on Physics (mostly on science fiction), information theory and cryptography for illustration of “strange” quantum effects and work of Net protocols, using the procedure of coding. The debut of Alice and Bob happened in 1978 in the article by computer engineers devoted to the method of coding with an open key." The authors of the article suggested calling a symbolic sender of a coded message A – Alice and a coded receiver B – Bob. Not so many people as agents are understood by a sender and a receiver who exchange information according to a set protocol, first of all, computer programmes themselves. Strictly speaking, Alice and Bob is a symbolic personification of different functional parts of the computer code or kibenoma (names of algorithmic substances). In IT-industry names of Alice and Bob are accepted as symbols, as a part of professional vocabulary.

The project was inspired by a wonderful research article by Svetlana Anatolyevna Eremeeva Bob leaves Alice. Ars Moriendi in the digital epoch. The article was published in 2018 in Archeology of Russian Death magazine (No 6, “Death and Technologies”).

Autor of article: Piter Hitchens
Перевод статьи Питера Хинченса: Анатолий Ализар

Об авторе. Питер Хинченс — бельгийский разработчик, писатель и бывший президент Фонда свободной информационной инфраструктуры, ассоциации, которая борется с софтверными патентами в Европе. Автор более 30 протоколов и распределённых систем, основатель свободного проекта ZeroMQ и проекта Edgenet по созданию полностью безопасной, анонимной глобальной P2P-сети, исполнительный директор и ведущий программист компании iMatrix. Автор книг «Культура и империя: цифровая революция», «Код психопата», «Масштабируемый Си» и др.

Благодарности: Светлана Еремеева

Send your ideas

*if you wish to remain anonymous, just skip these points

Maria Ionova-Gribina

Artist works with photography and other mediums. Her work is based on in-depth research of the different psychological patterns of our society, with the methodology of reconstruction the ordinary life situations. In her projects, she divides society into different groups and categories depends on a topic. For instance: kids with guns, people who are talking about sex, man, who had never had a kid in their life, etc.

photo, 2010-2015

morta

natura

Click on the bird to see photos

I remembered my childhood, when my brother and I found a dead mole, bird or beetle, we buried them at the edge of the forest, decorating the graves with flower petals and pebbles. Why did we do that? Probably children’s curiosity, the first study and understanding of mortality.

All animals in this project died naturally or after accidents with cars. The flowers were gathered near the place I found them or in my garden.

I found these dead animals during bicycle rides to the sea in the summer. I wanted to find a way to save them for world of art. They were so unprotected… One or two days more and they would be eaten by worms.

photo, 2017-2018

of death

Scene

Those who want can go excursion to the Museum of World Burial Culture, which is called the Museum of death for short and situated on the territory of the complex. Its funds include dozens of thousands of artefacts, connected with the themes of dying, death, mourning, sorrow and burial traditions of different cultures. On the one hand, mourning-entertaining events restore the theme of death having been excluded in the modern sterile world to the rhythm of everyday life of a separate town, washing away special separation between the living and the dead characteristic of the time a few centuries ago. On the other hand, all the ceremonies take place in the estranged paradigm of the show of the modern culture.

The Novosibirsk crematorium was founded in 2003. The Memorial complex with crematorium, columbarium and the Memory Park has a reputation of the cemetry of the XXIth century. There is a free hire of bicycles, a mini-zoo, a children playground, a café, free Wi-Fi. There can be ordered a burial ceremony of any religion and its broadcasting in the Net in the real time format. Relatives of the dead launch white pigeons, there is an opportunity to launch ashes in space.

Photographer from Novosibirsk, lives in Saint Petersburg. In 2017 finished Dock-dock-dock-school of modern photography (curators: Mikhail Domozhilov and Feodora Domozhilova- Kaplan). Participated in Andrei Polikanov Photoworkshop. Finalist of «Young photographers of Russia 2017» contest, winner of «Young photographers of Russia 2018» contest, nominee for Photography Grant, series of projects were published on lenta.ru, «Dear Dad, you are a transformer», Bird in Flight.

Galya Halilova