Thai Artist Lectures to Corpses on Topic of Death

Thai-born artist Araya Rasdjarmrearnsook’s series of performance pieces, collectively called “Death Seminar,” involves the artist engaged in reciprocal interactions with corpses — often in the form of conversation — where language is used to reveal social blind spots around how we think about death. The “seminars” cover topics that range from the social to the esoteric, illuminating topics that the living would do well to contemplate more seriously and more often.

Death Seminar B, 2005 single channel video
(Credit: aerzteblatt.de)

On the surface, these performances could be considered offensive, farcical or both. Who in their right mind speaks to a corpse — or has a conversation with it — expecting a fruitful discourse? What purpose could it serve to record that “conversation” for public consumption? And why make the effort to secure corpses who cannot hear or respond? Is Rasdjarmrearnsook making fun of those who speak with the dead?

To explore these questions, we can listen carefully to what Rasdjarmrearnsook is saying in her lecture in “The Class, Death Seminar,” which employs a simple white room, a blackboard, and Rasdjarmrearnsook as lecturer, addressing and sometimes conversing with a student body of corpses obtained from a local morgue. She considers time and memory — the memory of the living as well as the dead. This puts the dead into a reciprocal relationship with the living by giving them agency and an opportunity to speak — literally — although we may not be able to hear with our human ears. This concept of reciprocity stretches back to an indigenous concept of the ancestors — the family and wisdom keepers of days gone by — who are an active influence in the daily decisions of individuals, families and communities.

“Reading for One Female Corpse” by Araya Rasdjarmrearnsook
(Credit: tumblr.com)

At one point in “The Class, Death Seminar,” Rasdjarmrearnsook asks of a student, “Do you have a question? Please speak up a little — it’s very difficult to hear you! Ah, ‘What are we going to get out of this topic?'” She reflects that gain and loss are concern related to the realm of the living, and that, ultimately, understanding death through conversation and exploration is a necessary gain in order to die well. Although there are many ways to die, Rasdjarmrearnsook suggests that we all experience the same death.

Lecturing to corpses can also be read as a comment on time within the context of what is and is not too late. “The Class, Death Seminar” calls attention to the grievous lack of death and grief education in the public and post-secondary school systems, which informs morality and cultural values within the Western world. To prevent the farce of teaching dying to the dead, Rasdjarmrearnsook calls us to have these discussions now, so that we can approach the manner of our dying in the most enlightened way possible.