update after conversation with natalie

>>>>>>>>>>>>>>Update after discussion with Natalie

Site of death (cemetery) as site of ecological renewal

Death routines Natalie Mentioned:

- Turning Carbon remains into diamonds – http://www.lifegem.com/secondary/whatisLG2006.aspx
- Making human DNA trees http://www.trembl.org/alumni/01-03/transplant.html
- In Australia the tradition to plant a tree every year on your birthday – so when you die you leave a forest – forest as your death bed.
- In Halmstad, Sweden they get their thermal heat from the local crematorium http://www.cfosnafu.com/crematorium-towns-new-source-of-heat/

These serve as a contrast to the cemetery safari. They are about somehow “capturing” the dead person and remembering the dead by having something of them forever. Well the diamond idea is just pretty gross. The tree…no matter that the tree is alive, really. It’s a more poetic version of the diamond. It serves the dead person’s memory by existing, not growing. The human’s DNA inside it serves no purpose at all (the genes are not expressed) and in fact may be detrimental, I don’t think anybody knows this for sure yet.

The cemetery safari proposes a memory to death by enabling life. It’s not about capture, but about regeneration.

1. Attending to the dead by attending to nature. As Natalie said, “ritualized process to attend to natural processes.” In a way, its kind of a buddhist idea, I guess. Except the ritual part will be Judeo-Christian style, with lots of ritual and trinkets and songs. [[Nina Katchadourian's song about the organisms that feed off the dead body http://www.ninakatchadourian.com/]].
2. Also thinking about the death part, the ultimate natural process, the one part of our [human, natural] lives in many ways that technology can not save us from…only in birth and death are we still animals…except not even in birth anymore, with all the reproductive technology…so only in death.
3. Death takes up a huge space in the natural system, and a huge part in our cognitive space. Attending to both the cognitive system and the natural system becomes on ritual, one process. Reconciling, in a way, the intellectual and the visceral, the body and the mind, nature and technology. Dead must share space with the living.

Possible Actions:
1. “Pro Life” Personal training routine at the cemetery. Morning jogs at the cemetery allow for an environmental monitoring that is good for my health, too. Do yoga in the morning on the subway up there with Carolyn Wallon?
2. After-dinner nighttime cemetery safari walk. “Go into the underworld: an exploration of the insect world of the cemetery.”
3. Feed the animals by bringing flowers or other things to the dead.

TO DO:
1. Investigate more death routines
2. Investigate different cultures and see what they leave for food
3. Read Charity Scribner, Requiem for Communism, Cultural Memory
4. Learn about plot recycling. When can you put bodies on top of each other? When can you recycle grave sites? How long does our cultural memory last? How long does your posthumous career last?
5. Learn about reincarnation, Buddhist take on death and memory.
6. Think about ecology, ritual, health, death, memory and how they fit together