Bird food > worm food: disposal of human remains
Since the beginning of time, humans have appointed self-important and often hilarious ritual to the disposal of human remains (mummies anyone?). In an interesting and controversial addition to this extravaganza, artist Nadine Jarvis designs a bird-feeder made from bird food and human ash.
Yes, you too can be bird shit.
Clearly, maggots are not high enough on the food chain to touch us. It’s time we put a stop to this. Harsh as it sounds, it is a far more ethical and a vastly less ridiculous measure than the perverse, half-arsed preservation that traditional Western burial offers.
So far, no complaints from the avian demographic, although we’re still awaiting comment from the vulture community.
November 7th, 2007 at 10:42 am
Sounds fine by me, I liked the idea of my body being left out to be picked at by the birds, there’s a few traditions that follow that line of thought.
November 7th, 2007 at 3:38 pm
Another great implementation of human ash on her site titled “Carbon Copies” – pencils made from human ash!
http://www.nadinejarvis.com/projects/carbon_copies
I love her whole post-mortem project – we’re all rather low on space and resources, and not so low on corpses.
November 8th, 2007 at 6:00 am
There’s been talk about simply adding our bodies to ze family compost heap. Something USABLE. Here fucking here.
November 8th, 2007 at 10:24 pm
Aw, man. I like maggots.
(I blame gin, and Eisenstein.)
February 8th, 2008 at 8:03 am
that is great.