Hillevi Hesseldahl

My degree project explores two possible future death rites amidst a climate crisis. Does the future of all life on planet Earth rely on human reconnection to the environment, or human innovation? In these two scenarios, the tenets of two different societies have shaped two very different ways of approaching life and death.

In the first scenario, “Gaian Sympoiesis”, a full-scale body urn brings the body back to the soil to eventually decompose and re-integrate into ecological flows. The cycles of life guide the principles of this proposal, offering a material reincarnation.

In the second scenario, “Cybernetic Ascendancy”, a lifetime of a person’s digital footprint has been collected and removed, now compressed into a crystal orb. This artefact exemplifies the ideology of the mind capturing the essence of a human.