Over the Deadline
Spring 2019
By Nina Tsyboulskaia
- MA2
I have worked on how people are brought into the afterlife, from the tradition of death-masks to contemporary ideas of digital avatars. In that relation, my project is about exploring what it means to become an object of use after death in the structure of consumerism. In order to open up the area of my interest, I have used an imaginary scenario on the basis of existing ideas as a method to speculate around this theme. We have some established systems around death, as declaration and testament for property and financial capital, funeral and donation of the body and the organs. But what about our digital imprints? This arena is relatively new, and privacy policy laws are generally not applicable to dead people. The lack of restrictions creates the potential for both use and misuse of imprints after a lived life. In that connection, some companies are considering the empty space after someone’s death as an empty spot to fill with products that your relatives can use. The idea is to use the lack of restrictions of digital data as an open source of instruments together with my field of interest as a practician. In order to enter into a dialogue, I’m trying to create objects that provoke mixed and contradictory feelings. In that sense, I look at conversations that come as a result of this project as an equally important part of the final work.