Gallery
Project overview
An immersive lecture-workshop exploring contemporary relationships with death through an interdisciplinary lens, integrating cultural history, psychoanalytic theory, biological science and speculative futures.
The project functioned as a curated knowledge experience, positioning death not as a taboo, but as a critical lens through which to examine technological progress, shifting ethics and the future of human existence.
By merging research-based content with participatory storytelling, the event invited participants to confront mortality in the context of accelerated innovation and life-extension technologies.
Conceptual approach
The project unfolded through four interwoven narrative layers:
Cultural memory & symbolism: tracing representations of death from medieval danse macabre to contemporary visual culture and medical paradigms.
Biological reality & techno-science: exploring the physiological processes of aging and dying alongside emerging bio-technologies promising life extension and digital legacy.
Philosophical inquiry & ethics: examining how mortality shapes identity, values and collective moral frameworks.
Speculative design: engaging participants in future-oriented thinking to critically question how prolonged life might redefine meaning, responsibility and societal structures.
Participatory methodology
A non-linear narrative structure allowed participants to actively co-create the flow of the session by making decisions that shaped its conceptual trajectory.
This interactive format transformed passive reception into experiential reflection, making visible the relationship between choice, consequence and constructed realities.
Outcomes & resonance
The project enabled participants to move beyond abstract contemplation toward embodied engagement with the concept of death.
Through dialogue and speculative scenarios, attendees confronted the emotional, ethical and systemic implications of extended life, revealing tensions between technological aspiration and existential acceptance.
Main insight
The project demonstrated that death-focused discourse, when approached with care, can become a powerful tool for future literacy.
It highlighted speculative design as a medium capable of creating safe yet challenging spaces for exploring humanity’s deepest uncertainties, allowing audiences to critically interrogate futures before they become normalized realities.