I will be hosting this live Zoom presentation via the Atlas Obscura’s Wonder from Home program on the evening of July 10th (US time), concerning the antique “ghost show” I inherited from my father: The Iowa-based Ghost Factory company manufactured and sold all manner of “spookology” effects during the early/mid-20th century. Some of their customers … Read moreUnboxing an Antique Ghost Show (July 10, 2020)
Founded and edited by John Wadsworth, Art of Dying Magazine offers a wide range of feature articles by and about people who are working creatively with death. Within the three issues published to date, features have ranged from an opinion piece on the state of the American funeral industry by Order of the Good Death … Read moreArt of Dying Magazine
Leslie Ann Epperson’s 2015 documentary (trailer above) examines the history, personalities, logistics and guiding ethos of Tucson’s acclaimed All Souls Procession. This secular and notably artistic remembrance of death and celebration of life dates back to the year 1990 and has grown from strength to strength – a recent count estimated well over 150,000 participants … Read more“Many Bones, One Heart” – a Documentary on Tucson’s All Souls Procession
VICE reporter Yuka Uchida investigates the practice of “Well Dying” or “Near Death” simulations in South Korea, wherein participants experience a ritual “death” – including the writing of final letters to loved ones and a symbolic burial – in order to gain perspective on their lives.
By Tony Wolf The medieval, black-cloaked Grim Reaper has long devolved into parody via New Yorker cartoons and Monty Python sketches. Here’s a gallery of images I’ve created in Dreams, towards a new personification of death, represented as an inevitable and integral part of the natural cycle. A “Green Reaper”, perhaps …
English poet Thomas Hardy (1840-1928) writes of the “second death”: II heard a small sad sound,And stood awhile among the tombs around:“Wherefore, old friends,” said I, “are you distrest,Now, screened from life’s unrest?” II—”O not at being here;But that our future second death is near;When, with the living, memory of us numbs,And blank oblivion comes! … Read more“The To-Be-Forgotten” (1899)
Audio as the Realm of the Dead was a 2007 site-specific memento mori sound art project by Victoria Estok: Created as a gift to those who recognize Roosevelt, NJ as their home, this one day sound installation allowed the dead to be heard again and the listener to enter into a realm of shared memory deep … Read more“Audio as the Realm of the Dead”
New Orleans artist Candy Chang created the first Before I Die wall in 2011, after the death of a close friend. By painting the wall of an abandoned house in her neighborhood with chalkboard paint and repeatedly stenciling the phrase “Before I die I want to”, followed by a blank line, she established a local … Read moreThe “Before I Die” Project
Here’s an excerpt from Stefania Spano’s essay for Hektoen International: A Journal of Medical Humanities on the theme of dark humor in memento mori art: Ruysch’s artistry was matched by his commitment to the underlying science and to using the materials of the dead to teach the living. “I do this,” he explained, “to take … Read more“Laughing in the Face of Death: Ruysch, Dark Humor & Subversion of the Memento Mori in Anatomical Art”
Activist Danny Gamboa produced this short, intimate documentary on ghost bikes – junk bicycles painted white and locked to street signs as memorials to riders killed by cars in traffic accidents.