We are, every one of us, mortal beings. Throughout the course of our lives we will deal with that knowledge and its consequences. We will suffer bereavement and loss. It is a universal condition, unavoidable and inevitable. Our mortality is what makes us human. We surround ourselves with habits and rituals to deal with that fact, and have since history began.
The modern funeral industry tries to hide that fact from us – we label funerals ‘celebrations of life’, insist that our loved one ‘passed on’, use deadly chemicals to preserve a body against signs of… well, death! The entire process seems stacked against allowing us any idea of what dying entails.
In this project I will use Martin Heidegger’s concept of the being-towards-death and Havi Carel’s ideas about ‘bodily doubt’ to explore how the crematorium as we know it today, of hidden steel ovens and pretty urns, contributes to the sanitisation of our understanding of death and mortality to the extent that we lose understanding of it, and fear it. In fearing it, we avoid it, and in avoiding it, we lose part of what it means to be authentically human.