In November 2012 we posted about Dumb Ways to Die, an Australian train company’s public safety campaign video. The video just won top awards at the Cannes International Festival of Creativity. You can read more about the award from the Guardian: Cannes Lions: Dumb Ways to Die scoops top award.
If you missed it last time, definitely check it out!
Future Death. Future Dead Bodies. Future Cemeteries
Illustrated lecture by Dr. John Troyer, Centre for Death and Society at the University of Bath
20th June 2013
Doors at 6:30 / Talk begins at 7:00 pm
Ticket price £7
The Last Tuesday Society at 11 Mare Street, London, E8 4RP
This coming Thursday, June 20, 2013 I’m giving a public talk for the Morbid Anatomy Library and the Last Tuesday Society in London. The Morbid Anatomy Library talks are normally located in the lovely Gowanus Canal area of Brooklyn (don’t pay any attention its Superfund site classification) but its Librarian-in-Chief Joanna Ebenstein is currently in London to organise this lecture series.
Joanna has been a good friend to the Death Reference Desk and one of our earliest supporters. Indeed, the very first Morbid Anatomy talk that I ever gave (in Brooklyn) was in July 2009. That was the same month and year that Death Ref launched.
It’s been an adventurous four years.
So come to this talk on Thursday if you can or, even better, go to one of the many other fantastic talks curated by Joanna at the Last Tuesday Society.
You will not be disappointed.
Future Death. Future Dead Bodies. Future Cemeteries
Illustrated lecture by Dr. John Troyer, Deputy Director of the Centre for Death and Society at the University of Bath20th June 2013
Doors at 6:30 / Talk begins at 7:00 pm
Ticket price £7
Approximately 1500 people die every day across the United Kingdom, roughly one person a minute. And unless you are a person who works in a profession connected to the dying, chances are good you rarely (if ever) see any of these 1500 dead bodies. More importantly– do you and your next of kin know what you want done with your dead body when you die? In the future, of course, since it’s easier to think that way. Dr. John Troyer, from the Centre for Death & Society, University of Bath, will discuss three kinds of postmortem futures: Future Death, Future Dead Bodies, and Future Cemeteries. Central to these Futures is the human corpse and its use in new forms of body disposal technology, digital technology platforms, and definitions of death.
Dr John Troyer
Dr. John Troyer is the Deputy Director of the Centre for Death and Society at the University of Bath. His interdisciplinary research focuses on contemporary memorialisation practices, concepts of spatial historiography, and the dead body?s relationship with technology. Dr. Troyer is also a theatre director and installation artist with extensive experience in site-specific performance across the United States and Europe. He is a co-founder of the Death Reference Desk website (http://www.deathreferencedesk.org) and a frequent commentator for the BBC. His forthcoming book, Technologies of the Human Corpse (published by the University of North Carolina Press), will appear in 2013.
The Last Tuesday Society is honoured to house this exhibition and lecture series cultivated in collaboration with Joanna Ebenstein of the rightfully venerated ‘Morbid Anatomy’ Library, Museum & Blog.
Talks take place at The Last Tuesday Society at 11 Mare Street, London, E8 4RP
No funeral money? What to do
By Geoff Williams, U.S. News & World Report (May 30, 2013)
What’s worse than dying? Maybe dying broke.
It has been a while since an unclaimed-dead-bodies-continue-to-be-a-problem story appeared in the news. Within weeks of the Death Reference Desk launching in July 2009 (four more years! four more years!) we were already amassing all kinds of terrible news items on not just unclaimed dead bodies left at the morgue but next-of-kin choosing to leave a dead body unclaimed because they couldn’t afford the various fees which came with claiming a body. This recent article by Geoff Williams at U.S. News & World Report focuses on the numerous financial obstacles confronting many, many people when arranging a funeral, but I was struck by the re-emergence of the unclaimed dead body narrative. Williams introduces the unclaimed dead body problem this way:
It’s a serious problem that seems to have grown worse over the years and one that spiked during the recession. There is no organization that tracks unclaimed bodies, but coroners throughout the country, in local news stories, have reported that the numbers are climbing. In 2011, Oregon cremated 30 percent more unclaimed corpses than the year before. In 2012, in Myrtle Beach, S.C., the coroner asked the county to create a special cemetery for unclaimed bodies due to a lack of dignified space to put the remains.
The problems involving unclaimed dead bodies became so rampant four years ago that we created a Death Reference Desk tag for unclaimed bodies. You can read those stories here.
And, as most readers will figure out, the US spike in unclaimed dead bodies is largely due to the economic recession. Williams succinctly sums up that situation. Not coincidentally, Death Ref also started a Death + the Economy section at the same time that the unclaimed bodies tag was born.
One thing is certain. In the decades to come, historians will look back at the economic straits currently being experienced (around the world, really) and make a point of discussing how dead bodies went uncollected.
That historical situation will give people pause, but only until another more exciting story comes along and diverts everyone’s attention.