Der Tod mag für jeden Menschen gleichermaßen unvermeidlich sein, aber er beendet nicht jedes Leben auf die gleiche Weise. Der Bruchteil der Zeit, der dem Selbst noch bleibt, bevor der Tod (oder der ausgedehnte Sterbeprozess) sich dem Bewusstsein nähert, ist der Schauplatz für die Übung in letzter Minute. Jede Übung akzeptiert, dass der Tod, der große Gleichmacher, zwar ein allgemeines theoretisches Problem sein mag, eine Frage der Philosophie,  – dennoch erscheint er in verschiedenen Gestalten, macht alle Moden mit, passt sich er Situation an. Es gibt so viele Arten des Todes wie es Leben gibt, und ebenso viele Möglichkeiten ihn zu leugnen.

Wir bieten verschiedene Erzählungen an, die für den Zeitpunkt unseres Todes geübt werden können. Spezialisten und Praktiker aus den Bereichen Biologie, Medizin, Veterinärwissenschaft, Philosophie, Recht, Religionswissenschaft, Forensik, Kunst und Anthropologie werden sich in Neu-Delhi in einer eigens dafür eingerichteten Arena auf dem Ausstellungsgelände “Mati Ghar” im Indira Gandhi National Centre for the Arts versammeln, um verschiedene philosophische Theorien, wissenschaftliche Spekulationen und individuelle Praktiken für den Zeitpunkt des Todes öffentlich zu präsentieren.

Ein Projekt für INSERT 2014: The Sharp Edge of the Global Contemporary, Künstlerische Leiter: Raqs Media Collective

*Programme only in English

THE MANY LIVES OF DEATH

The invited panel will present their accounts on what death means to science, law, religion, philosophy and culture. They will present reports on the controversies attending to its precise moment of occurrence and on the biological process of decomposition. They will narrate myths and religious metaphors surrounding death, discuss political scenarios and ethical conundrums, consider theories of metamorphosis and attend to martyrdom, meaning and meaninglessness while talking about death.

The diverse experiential, cultural and historical facets of death as a human phenomenon are shaped and perceived differently across the world, and have been seen and talked about differently across time. This event will embrace and stage that diversity. Even the seemingly straightforward question of “When, precisely, is one dead ?” – evokes a variety of answers. The answers vary with who answers, with who is asking, and why the question is being asked.
Does death connote finality, or a transition? Is the moment of death a moment of disintegration into elemental nature or a dissolution into the cosmos? Does it occur when a person stops breathing or when their funeral rites are concluded? Is it a marker of the marvelous contingency and brevity of human life, or a prelude to an embrace of the infinite. Is it a cul-de-sac, a vestibule or corridor leading to other states of existence, or a prelude to a return to the world? Is death the occasion for a judgement on the conduct of how a life was lived? Is it the great tidying up of the mess of all our days, the instrument that re-establishes the order of the world? Is it death that ensures that the individual is absorbed into the collective presence of memory or rendered absent into oblivion? Does death renew life by making room for the living? Is death a means for the harpooning of awareness, an occasion for an ethical lesson and a chance to shape our life; or is it always an unacceptable imposition that has to be categorically rejected if one has to affirm life?

THE CLINICAL DEATH

No matter how particularly we may view the concreteness of death and dying, a certain definition of the moment of death has established itself around much of the world in recent times. We could call this the definition of ‘clinical death’.
In 1968 an Ad Hoc Commission of the US Harvard Medical School in Boston published what came to be known as the ‘brain death criteria’. These criteria include – absence of brain activity, lack of responsiveness, irreversible loss of reflexes and inability to breathe without a ventilator.

With the operationalization of this definition in clinical practice and palliative care it is no longer medically necessary to wait for the heart to stop beating, or for the appearance of the customary signs of death like rigor mortis and suggillation. According to this definition, when one is ‘brain dead’, only then is one a corpse, even if the body is still warm and the blood circulating. Except for a few minor details, the ‘brain death’ criteria remain in force in many places down to the present day. It is no longer the heart but the brain that determines the time of death. (The brain death criterion was introduced in Germany in 1968, in Finland in 1971, in India in 1994, Taiwan in 1987. Japan has till today not accepted the criterion. The UK rejected whole brain death as a criterion, while accepting ‘irreversible brain stem damage’ as the criterion of death in 1977. The Uniform Determination of Death Act established the Brain Death criteria in the USA in 1981).

In 1968 a legally unobjectionable concept of the ‘time of death’ was seen as necessary in order to juridically frame the transplantation of vital organs that were still supplied by blood. The first heart transplantation along these lines had taken place on December 3, 1967 in Cape Town, South Africa. Till this time, the doctors operating an organ transplant worked without a legal safeguard for their actions.

With the brain dead criterion we have accepted (without ever being asked) a theoretical construct for death. This medicalized theory of death demands of us that we take a few startling premises as given: that from now on death has a definitive location in the body, and that it takes place in the brain. The timeframe for determining death is brought forward, for – after all – the organs are still working. We are asked to no longer trust our sensory perception – for what we see is a body wherein the blood still circulates –even though we are asked to believe the judgment of experts who have pronounced it dead. Further, we have accepted that this definition of our time of death is based neither on a philosophical or ethical rationale, but on the economic rationality of adjusting the pressing demand for organs to a real shortfall of donors. At the same time, it must be clearly acknowledged that the functioning of the brain death criteria can and does save lives and addresses the cruel paucity of healthy organs for patients in critical conditions. However, as the philosopher Hans Jonas noted in his criticisms of the criteria as early as 1968, this medical theory of death denies the objective indeterminacy of death.

A TOOL-KIT FOR EXERCISING THE LAST MINUTE

These different scenarios, motifs and motivations are conceived as constituting a thematic scaffolding for a set of discursive exercises to be practiced in relation to the time of death. The conversations unfolding as a part of ‘Last Minute Exercises’ under the Pipal Tree next to the Mati Ghar offer conceptual building blocs from which we can fashion our own intellectual tool-kit for confronting the time of departure. Perhaps some of these could become talismans, mnemonic aphorisms or mantras. Perhaps we could appropriate them as our own techniques to sharpen our consciousness of and for the last moment.

Thanatology, meditation on death, is a time-honored technique, going back to Ancient Greeks who understood death as an aesthetic exercise, as well as to practices outlined in the Tibetan Book of the Dead. These included the suggestion to imagine the faces of the mourners lined up at the grave. This latter exercise is indeed practiced today in another guise, by actors playing corpses in American TV series, who have to be able to professionally and convincingly embody the presence of death in life before the camera.

How can we take life seriously, if we do not look death in the face? Let’s talk about a different thanatology, under the peepal tree at mati ghar in Delhi

BRAIN
If the Conducter is Dead, the Orchestra Stops Playing
Dr. Samiran Nundy

CHANGE
The Art of a Pious Death The Self-Conscious Practice of Sallekhana and Santhara
Dr. Shugan Jain

CLINICAL DEATH
The Clinical Definition of Death
Dr. Ambarish Satwik

DREAM
From Death to Dreaming and Awaking
Prof. Susan Visvanathan

FIRE 1 CREMATORIUM
Reruns of The Dead: Between Recycling and Re-Absorption On Cremation Cultures

FIRE 2 BENARAS
Sabko ghoom phir ke yahin aana hai – Everyone, through their Merry Rounds and Repeated Journeys Have to Eventually Come Here
Dr. Ravi Nandan Singh

FRIENDS
Passive Euthanasia: The Patient’s Point-of-View
Pinki Virani

HEARTBREAK
Queer Suicides
Lesley Esteves

HEROINE
Chamunda and The Heroic Death
Prof. Naman Ahuja

MASS GRAVES
The Apparatives of Disappearances in Kashmir
Sanjay Kak

MOTHER
Mothers, Blood and Lust
Prof. Nivedita Menon

REVOLUTION
The Story of the Cancer Cell as Conquering Revolutionist
Dr. Ellora Sen

ROPE
Dying without Being Killed – Lives of Prisoners Sentenced to Death in India
Prof. Anup Surendranath

STAGED DEATH
Death is not enough
Prof. Amitesh Grover

THINGS
It is Not Me Who Dies, It Is The World Around Me
Sopan Joshi

TRANSFORMATION
Physical Immortality – Sri Aurobindo and After
Prof. Makarand Paranjape

UNKNOWN
Death – An Intrigue of Philosophy
Prof. Saitya Brata Das

WATER
The Missing Image
R.V. Ramani

WITNESS
Mujhe chal basne ke lakshan dikh jaate hain – I Can See the Signs of Death
Sunita

ZONE
Travelling the In-Between – Why I Rather Gave My Dead Father a Bicycle Than a Horse on His Journey
Dr. Trinath Mishra

Programmdetails

HOW TO SPEND ETERNITY? PRIVATE COINSULTATION

Half an hour sessions with Inder Salim and Q
Only with reservation or pre-booking. Rs. 10 only

Check in for an exclusive one-on-one consultation about how you would like to spend eternity. Regardless of whether or not you believe that physical death is only a prelude to the afterlife, this consultation aims to help you to design your own special private entrance ticket into eternity. Q, an intriguing experimental filmmaker from Kolkata, known for his daring take on love, desire and life, and Inder Salim, New Delhi’s popular performance artist, will offer these exclusive sessions.
Make your reservations under the Peepal Tree besides the Mati Ghar, IGNCA. The check-in is open from 3:00 p.m. on the day.

Inder Salim is a performance artist practicing more than 15 years in India and abroad during protests, events and festivals. He founded the Harkat School-Unschool of Performance art, a nine-month long engagement with Sarai Reader 09 at Devi Art Foundation. In 2010 he organized ‘Art Karavan International’, a two and a half month long journey through nine cities in the north of India along with 30 national and international participants to conduct an open ended interactive action oriented processes. Presently he is an IFA grantee.Q (Qaushiq Mukherjee) is an independent filmmaker. His first feature was ‘Gandu’ (2010), an indie cult phenomenon. In 2009 he directed ‘Love in India’, an international documentary about sexual identity and the gap between genders, for which he won an Indian National Award; ‘Tasher Desh’ (The Land of Cards, 2013), a surreal adaptation of a fantasy play by Rabindranath Tagore, and ‘Sari’, a quirky documentary on the ancient Indian fabric. Q is also a singer and rapper, front lining the Bengali post-o punk rap band ‘Gandu Circus’. He started a progressive arts platform called OVERDOSE.

Konzept: Hannah Hurtzig
Recherche und Produktion: Arnika Ahldag
Bühnenbild und Tarotkarten: Florian Stirnemann
Technische Leitung: Sayantan Maitra “Boka”
Counter Hostessen: Kavya Murthy, Hannah Hueneke, Manya Goel, Vaibhav Singh, Kanika Kuthiala, Shweta Wahi
Anouncements-Hostess: Lily Tekseng
Publikumsmoderatorin: Aprameya Manthena
Videodokumentation: Varun Mathur und Gautam Pandey
Druck: Impress/Arokia Raj

INSERT 2014
Künstlerische Leitung: Raqs Media Collective
Executive Director: Priya Pall
Assistenzkuratorin: Srinivas Aditya Mopidevi
Projektleiter: Shivangi Singh

Dieses Projekt ist Teil von INSERT2014, präsentiert von The Inlaks Foundation, Mumbai und wird mit Unterstützung des Goethe-Instituts / Max Mueller Bhavan realisiert.