Electronically translated (AKA, very poorly translated) from French
By Sophie Massé, Urbania
Raoul Bretzel and Anna Citelli, two Italian designers, are proud to present Capsuled it Mundi. An organic coffin. A large egg of bioplastic which can accommodate the body in foetal position
“For us, death is one moment of transformation, which seals our membership in the natural world. It is a rebirth in another form, the entrance point in the spiritual world “Thus, as the” capsule “is degraded, the tree planted above extends its roots. This strange object, seen in several exposures of design in Europe, redefines the paradigms of the “last residence”.
Death such as we practise it pollutes. The embalmed body is shot with formaldehyde. It is then buried in a varnished coffin, provided with metal handles not particularly biodegradable. The object will have served large four days. The incineration is not a more honourable door of exit. The purists to you will say that it consumes energy (generally, natural gas) and transforms leadings into mercury, which is slackened in the atmosphere. Acknowledge that that does not give the taste to die.
To finish that in ritual green “the funerary current ones do not correspond any more to the needs for a part of the company”, explains in interview Gerald Moliné, codessinator with Martin Ruiz de Azua of Bioa Urn, a ballot box ecologist made of recycled paperboard and compost, to which one added seeds of tree. Mike Salisbury, president founder of Natural Burial Cooperative of Canada, supports that it is logical that people are interested in the green funerary rites “By giving their body to the ground, they turn over from where they come. The fact that this decision has financial or ecological repercussions is one more “, says it. Its organization actively works to found the first ecological cemetery in Canada, left forest of the memory where the body would be buried without being embalmed. A tree would be then planted on the burial. The unit would give a protected place, favourable with meditation.
Cradle of green death In the United Kingdom, where the industry of natural death flowers since 1993, one counts now more than 200 eco-cemeteries. Funerary industry, over there, never had as much to be able that here, according to Mike Salisbury. It is there an ideal context for the development of an alternative industry. For Hazel Selina, creative of Écopod, the movement of green death in the United Kingdom has historical roots “We have an austere heritage Victorian which comes us from our good Reine old woman, in particular with regard to funerary industry. Natural death is perhaps a simple return of the beam, the rebirth of ritual less protocolar and collet assembled “Écopod which it factory is a light ultra coffin made recycled paper and which points out an Egyptian sarcophagus vaguely. It should be offered to Canada since 2008.
Will give its body to the compost Certaines ideas very far. Thus, the Swedish project Promessa, created by the biologist Susanne Wiigh-Mäsak, consists in cooling the body at cryogenic temperatures while plunging it in liquid nitrogen to make it friable before making it vibrate gently to reduce it out of powder. Water is then withdrawn from this powder, like all the superfluous parts (teeth with leadings, prostheses surgical, pacemaker, etc). The remainders, become entirely organic, are placed in a starch container, which is buried.
This surprising idea comes from a design as much practises that scientific decomposition. For Wiigh-Mäsak, the body must be prepared before being hidden if it is wished that it return to his organic form and that it is absorbed by the ground. If not, because it is too large and that it prevents the action of oxygen, the body breaks up slowly and can harm the natural balance of the ground “I found this method, perhaps but there exists about it of different. I wanted to be able to explain it to a 5 year old child without it being terrorized; one thus needed that this process seems to us acceptable from a psychological point of view “This biological approach, which was never yet tested, has also the advantage of accelerating the process of decomposition, which is essential as a solution for the overpopulation of the cemeteries…
Transgenic burial No initiative goes however further that the Biopresence project, of the artists Shiho Fukuhara and Georg Tremmel, which are given for mission of transferring from the human ADN to that of a tree, and which test the infinite possibilities of molecular biology in order to create what they name a “monument living” or a “transgenic burial”. Indeed, according to the natural principle of the “quiet change”, it would be possible to store information in the ADN of a tree without affecting the genetic code of it. At the end of such a metamorphosis, your gasoline “would be to some extent lodged” in the tree without this one not being able to be regarded as a genetically modified organization. In short, your posthumous destiny would be sealed with that another alive being. When one asks Georg Tremmel if it believes that art has answers to questions as fundamental as death, it warns to us: “death is an experiment much more immediate, more direct than art will be never. The objective of Biopresence, it is to facilitate our difficult report/ratio with dead by celebrating the life “This project could become reality in Japan from here a few years.
Not legal All these ideas are quite pretty. The difficulty: green death would undoubtedly not be completely lawful in Quebec, where the law requires, in particular, that a coffin has a lid, which it is equipped with handles, and that it is covered with 1,5 m ground “the law envisages in addition that the body of late not be able to be in liaison with the public more than 18 hours after the death, indicates David Émond, person in charge for the departmental coordination and teaching program of thanatology of the College of Rosemont. Beyond this time, the body must be embalmed. “These rules exclude from start the possibility of exposing the body if an ecological ritual is practised.
On the other hand, the exposure is still so current that many people think that it is required by the law. Nenni. “Ask any psychologist specialist in mourning; it will say to you that to see the body is the first stage of a successful mourning “, said David Émond. For Mike Salisbury, there is a paradox: “the first stage of mourning, it is the refusal. However, the embalming presents it dead as if it slept peacefully. As if it could, at any moment, to awake. The exposure is initially an idea which was sold to us by funerary industry
“For the hour, an ideal compromise could thus be the ecological embalming” It exists iodine a derivative, Aard Balm, which could replace formaldehyde, but it is not offered yet here “, specifies David Émond.
Coffin out of wooden recovered green death is however not a concept without life in Quebec. Stephan Elkas, director of the funerary House Steve L Elkas, in Sherbrooke, accepted a partnership with the coffins Vertsant. Since January 2006, this Québécois company manufactures, according to an artisanal method, wood coffins and ballot boxes recovered without nail neither screw, nor dyeing “I noticed that if people were attracted by the wood coffins than by the metal coffins, it was initially for ecological reasons”, tells Mr. Elkas.
* Remainder, while waiting for that green death strikes with our door, one can always go to finish his days in the United States, where one counts already six ecological cemeteries. Mike Salisbury is given, as for him, two years to open to it his, undoubtedly in Ontario. However, it could be preceded by Royal Oak Burial Park in Victoria, who announced in Victoria Times the opening of the first Canadian ecological cemetery from here 2009. All these ambitions are worthy of interest. From here so that the secrecy of the eternal life is found, of course…