Dressing the Dead: An interview with Designer Pia Interlandi

Pia Interlandi is a fashion designer, artist, funeral celebrant and teacher based in Melbourne, Australia.  Her work, often incorporating ideas of death, ritual and transformation, is varied, thoughtful and benefited by a great depth of research and experience. I am very pleased to be able to share Ms. Interlandi’s work and a conversation with her on The Daily Undertaker:

Patrick McNally: Clothing is very important to our sense of self.  We express our membership in certain social and religious groups as well as our own personal tastes and unique qualities through our clothing.  What does the choice of clothing made specifically for burial say about the person who chooses to wear it?

Pia Interlandi: There are (almost) no human cultures who do not engage with some sort of dressing, it is in fact one of the key determining factors in identifying humans in the history of evolution. In many ways our clothing is a second skin in which we present ourselves to the world.

This is no difference for the dead. To leave one naked for burial (which is something environmentalists have enquired about), is often seen as a sign of neglect or disrespect. Whilst the dead don’t have the same requirements of clothing that the living do; warmth, protection, comfort, it is the living who require the dressing of the dead.

A person who chooses a garment created specifically for internment is in fact acknowledging the end of life as an event, a moment as important and as sacred as birth. They also carry an awareness that this will be the last garment ever worn, and will in fact carry their body through its physical afterlife, symbolically and literally merging with their body. As my garments are designed to break down and encourage decomposition (rather than preservation), the message that people who choose to wear them is one of surrendering or the giving back of their body to the environment, an acceptance and embrace of biological inevitability.  

Designer Pia Interlandi

PM: Clothing that is designed to transform in a specific way when buried with the dead seems to have a sense of the secret about it.  Those who view and those who wear it will never see the transformation take place.  How do you as a designer communicate the value of this kind of garment?

PI: When designing I have undergone rigorous testing to determine the rate of fabric and fibre deterioration. Whilst these results are scientific they have meant that I can design my garments with intentional stages of transformation. I believe that these transformations, whilst indeed unseen, and therefore secret, are reassuring to the living. Knowing that there is something that will gradually unwrap the body, and reuniting it with the earth, with almost a sense of poetry, takes some of the fear out of burial. 

PM: Most clothing used for burial is a representation of who we are in life.  I have buried people in their bib overalls, in uniforms, in formal clothing, and have buried some with many different outfits.  Ritual clothing is something different.  The adherents of some traditions like Judaism and Later Day Saints, are dressed in special burial garments as a preparation to being presented to the divine.  In a way, I see your clothing doing the same thing, only the divine in this case is the earth.  What ritual meanings do you hope your clothing will have the potential of conveying?   

PI: I believe that my garments offer an option that both is representative of a person’s individuality in life and also symbolize their presentation to the physical afterlife, by which, you’re right, I mean the earth.  The ritual I hope to convey is one of establishing a reciprocal relationship with the environment, and the gradual absorption of the body into the landscape. 

PM: Your Body Sculpture work creates wonderful tactile and visual representations of our bodies transforming into earth.  What do you hope that viewers will take away from pondering this process and eventuality?

PI: Most people think that I have digitally altered the images, superimposing the roots, when they realise that all I have done is grown the pieces and with relatively unsophisticated methods photographed them, they experience an ‘ah’ factor.  I hope that viewers will then realise and see the beauty and magnificence in the natural process of the body becoming the landscape. That in many ways we are all linked to the planet we walk on and breathe in.

PM: Your work as a celebrant started with dressing one of your own loved ones after death.  Certainly participation in the physical acts of preparing a loved one for the grave is a wonderful opportunity for ritual and for understanding our own relationship with life, death and our loved one on a much deeper level.  Do you encourage the families that you work with to also engage in this kind of activity?

PI: Absolutely. The dressing of a deceased loved one in an immensely powerful process, and whilst it may not be for everyone, I gently encourage families to participate.

 The first time I encountered the body of someone I knew, I was shocked at how still and cold he was. It was so clear to me in that instant that whatever it was that made him alive, be it a soul, a sprit, chi, electricity between the neurons, had gone elsewhere. I found the experience positively enlightening and one that deeply assisted with my own grieving process. His body was not scary; it was just the physical shell that he left behind.

 With the dressings I have had the privilege of participating in, I have found that it is important for me to be as honest and relaxed as possible, explaining rigor and livor mortis as natural processes, and being at ease with maneuvering a person into their clothes. When families see that the body is not an object of fear or anxiety, they relax and grieve, and sit, and just be, with the person who has died.  The dressing encourages touch and tenderness. One of the most beautiful moments I’ve experience in dressing occurred when the daughters of the elderly lady we were clothing all started giggling when we were shuffling her into her tights, an item of clothing their mother had not worn in years. By the time we got to choosing her lipstick they were smiling through their tears, and reminiscing about all the funny things their mother used to do. The following rosary was a much more somber event, but through the dressing they were allowed to experience a wide spectrum of emotion.

I do warn families that the dead will ‘pass wind’ on occasion, but I’m yet to actually have this happen in a dressing.  

PM: Your dissolving clothing project seems to be a precursor to the burial garments, but it is also such a captivating idea in itself.  Clothing that is designed to dissolve is also like a secret; invisible ink for example.  We are left to wonder what was once there after the clothing has dissolved.  We are also drawn to ponder the importance of the process of dissolving instead of just interacting with clothing in its new and seemingly permanent state.  There are many analogies that can be drawn between our fleeting lives and the disappearing tissues of dissolving clothing.  Most prominent for me is the thought that the breakdown of my body from its beginning to it’s indistinguishable state in the earth can be seen as a beautiful process, not unlike cherry blossoms falling.  Can you tell us about your intentions and experiences with this work?

PI: At the time I began using dissolvable fibres within garments I was exploring concepts of fragility. Working with a cloth that would begin dissolving if your hands were too sweaty when you were sewing it, or, as I only experience once, would deteriorate if you sneezed on it, meant that as a maker I had to reassess my approach to the material.  On the body it drew awareness to the mortality of the garment, which in turn made the wearer aware of their own, human, mortality and fragility.

The dissolvable garments now work as a sped up version of what happens to the garment and body when buried. However, in a much more aesthetically acceptable way, which allows me to use the images as a way to communicate decomposition, without the disgust it usually conjures up.

PM: The research you have engaged in, studying the transformation of different kinds of clothing through burying pigs in your garments just floors me.  I have to mention here that ethical considerations were carefully addressed and approved in this work.  You have done the research on this material and I admire your dedication and passion in pursuing this special knowledge.  Can you share some of your motivations in engaging in this lengthy and controversial work, and tell us what you learned, and how you plan to make use of this knowledge in your future work?

PI: In 2009 RMIT supported me do a residency at SymbioticA, an artistic laboratory dedicated to the research, learning, critique and hands-on engagement with the life sciences, with the intent to study clothing and biological tissue decomposition and interaction. I was introduced to forensic entomologist Prof. Ian Dadour and over a few months we designed a project that would investigate at the rate of textile decomposition in a natural earth burial scenario.  I knew prior to starting the project that forensic research conducted in Australia involved the use of pig carcasses. Donated human bodies go to medical studies and not forensics, so pigs, with their similar size and organ orientation are the next best ‘alternative’. When Ian told me the number of pigs required to get statistically significant and therefore scientifically approved results, I almost withdrew from the project.

I had initially thought that we would use 3 pigs, and finding out the experimental design would include 7 digs, each recovering 3 pigs, totaling in 21. I felt overwhelmed, and after a few months of discussion with peers, I eventually negotiated with Ian that we would use pigs from the human food chain, and that they would be the pigs deemed undesirable and likely to end up in dog food. As such I would be acknowledging the lives of the pigs in a way that would not occur otherwise.  To Ian’s horror, I was going to visit the pigs before their death date, to give each a name, and to thoroughly wash and anoint each with rosemary oil for remembrance, prior to the dressing and burial. I wouldn’t refer to them as ‘tissue’ or ‘carcasses’, and so each received the name of an influential person in my research.  To distance myself from their deaths was counter intuitive, I wanted to be as engaged and present in the process as possible. 

Fabric recovered after burial 

The entire project, which stretched over the period of a year, has been thoroughly documented by film makers Kathy High and Cynthia White, in a film titled ‘Death Down Under’, currently in its final stages of editing. The documentary is one way in which the research will be disseminated; exhibition and academic publications some of the others.

PM: I look forward to seeing the documentary.  Thank you so much for sharing your work and your thoughts with us!  For more of Ms. Interlandi’s work, visit her website, http://www.piainterlandi.com/

Exploring Mortality with Designer Federico Santolini

Italian designer, Federico Santolini creates beautiful and thought provoking graphic, furniture and product work both independently and with his colleagues in the Dorothy Gray Design Firm in Bologna.  Mr. Santolini brings this conceptual design perspective to fine art as well.  Among his pieces are some that address our mortality in ways that allow us to visually connect and explore some of the overwhelming and unknowable issues surrounding life and death.  My thanks to Mr. Santolini for allowing me to share his work and his thoughts here on The Daily Undertaker.   

cristal cest
urn

Pat McNally: Your work challenges us to think and see in new ways about the world around us and our place in it.  In particular, three of your projects are of great interest to me.  In Cristal Cest (nest or basket), what appear to be ordinary marble cremation urns are enveloped in wire cages.  In Dust print / Mandala, a design with spiritual connotations becomes visible on the floor through the unintentional participation of visitors by picking up the dust from their shoes.  In La Condition Humaine, an aquarium’s restricted view becomes an analogy to the limits of our perception and potentials.  I’d like to hear about each project in detail, but first, what is your intent in challenging your audience in this way?  What do you hope for us to gain through our interaction with your work?

Federico Santolini: The three works you've chosen are very different and they had distinct developments, because they were projected for different ends in different ways.

Cristal cest is one of my personal projects; Dust print /Mandala was realized by myself and Dorothy Gray Design Studio, the one I work with; la Condition Humaine was nearly completely developed by Giovanni del Vecchio, one of Dorothy Gray Design Studio members, I just joined this project marginally. As a designer, I come from the product design field, so in my work the physical object and its function are fundamental, and I use the object itself to express concepts. From the object importance, I work on the interaction between it and the audience. When I want to express a particularly complicated concept, I prefer using stereotyped objects, neutral ones, because through them it's easier to make the concept more comprehensive. I applied the same reasoning to the materials: I often prefer using classical ones, because it's easier for the audience to enter upon familiar terms with them. I love when the object makes you think and force you to think about what you're doing in a specific moment and what you're using to do a particular action.

cristal cest
urn

PM: An urn is seated at an angle within a complicated wire framework that seems to have no relation to the form of the urn.  Obviously, the fact that the object within is an urn indicates to us that this piece is saying something to us about our mortality or our existence after death.

My reaction to the piece is to contemplate what there is present in and around the urn that could be described by this larger space, and I think of all that must take place in our existence that is unknown to us.  Perhaps this is the shape of some part of the person that cannot be contained within an urn.

What drew you to incorporate these elements together?  Do you have any thoughts about this piece that you’d like to share?

FS: Your personal interpretation of Cristal cest is really interesting. My intention is exactly to stimulate reactions and thoughts to those who approach my projects, enriching their value and meaning. I had your same idea of an external expansion of the internal urn contents, but what I really want to express is the urn's palpable holiness, at the same time protected and enhanced by the wire framework. I basically worked on a visible and tangible urn locked up in a nest structure that protects the urn, but, differently from a casket, allows the audience to touch and see it. Moreover the urn seems unstable, but it's fixed and supported by its protective cage.

Dust print / Mandala  working with dirt....

PM: A mandala is traced upon the floor with some adhesive material.  Right away we are reminded of incantations and the calling forth of supernatural forces.  Indeed the forces are gathered in the form of visitors bringing the dust of their shoes to inadvertently bring the mandala into being.

Dust reminds us not only of undesirable and unclean substances, but also of the dust we are said to be made of and must return to.  What I love about this piece, in addition to your clever manipulation of these ideas, is your use of the kinetic forces of bystanders, and the creation of beauty with a substance that is usually thought of as something that is anything but beautiful.  What were your thoughts in creating this piece?  What kind of reactions did you get from people as they realized their role in bringing this work to life?

FS: You've completely picked up the basic idea of this project: creating something from nothing, or better, from something usually considered as tiny and not desirable as the dust is. This work is also more provocative because realized during a contemporary art fair, where the audience expects to see and buy important works of art, not to create one through the dust! To be created, the Mandala needed many days and the passing by of many visitors. The mandala was at the art fair entrance. The first visitors didn't even understand what they were creating! The others, fully appreciated this work, participating in a stupefied and interested way, walking many times on the Mandala to bring more dust and taking pictures.

La condition humaine

PM: An aquarium is seemingly combined with a tombstone.  The legend etched on the marble tells us everything we need to know as we take in the small sliver of the aquarium that is actually open to our view.  Again, we seem to be confronted with the fact that as humans, we are aware of only a slice of what there is to know and experience in the world.  Just as we see only a slice of the spectrum of light, the greater part of the life and activity of the aquarium is hidden from our view.  Again we are confronted with our mortality because of the clock ticking on the wall, and the similarity of the inscribed marble to a tombstone.  Is our limited understanding due to the brief nature of our existence?  What is there that we cannot see just because of our other limitations?

These are questions that may not be new to us, but they are certainly brought out for us to ponder in a new and very visual way.  Ironically, you are showing us that we cannot see.

What is it about the limits of our human condition that you would  like for us to contemplate?  Would you hope that we took action because of these realizations?

La condition humaine Acquario

FS: As I told you before, I brought my contribution to La condition Humaine just during the concept phase. The idea of working on an Aquarium was a Giovanni Delvecchio's one; he's one of my colleagues at Dorothy Gray Design Studio, and I consulted him before answering your interview. The basic idea was working on an old aquarium using unusual materials and technologies for glass, like marble and carving. This beginning idea has started all the processes that you've well described: we wanted the audience to think about what an aquarium represents, a little world/ecosystem that, as owners, we can control, populate or upset. It's up to the audience evaluating if identifying with the aquarium owners or with the unaware fishes. The idea of hiding the aquarium view with the marble tombstone it's a provocation connected with the human capacity to see/understand the world around us, symbolized by the aquarium, and the possibility to show it to the others.

La condition humaine Acquario

PM: Thank you Mr. Santolini, for sharing your thoughts and your compelling work with us!    

La condition humaine Acquario

Please visit the Dorothy Gray website for more of this wonderful work.

Designer Federico Santolini

Originally posted on THURSDAY, JANUARY 27, 2011

Facilitating Ritual with Design: Adam Miklosi

Hungarian designer, Adam Miklosi's work is a wonderful example of elegant design, combining aesthetics and function.  The functions that Miklosi considers in his LR16 Disaster Coffin address issues that previous designs, such as the ubiquitous 'body bag' have left out.   The facilitation of funeral rituals, dignity, accommodation of  variety in disposition choices, and the use of an environmentally friendly material all make this design remarkable and important.  

It is my hope that Miklosi's work is recognized and that these essential issues are considered in any future designs that are implemented for human remains.  Each person deserves this level of respect, and each family deserves the opportunity to perform their funerary rites.  Here is the design, and his statement.  For more information on Adam Miklosi, visit his site: http://www.adammiklosi.hu/?w=1280      

LR16

Special coffin for disaster situations

"...Whether dealing with violent deaths in major disasters or in armed conflict, issues concerning the socio-cultural order of a community are valid. The inability to perform rituals condemns a family to a second death: the symbolic death of their loved one for the lack of a tomb that perpetuates his or her name and confers social worth to the deceased and his or her inclusion in the generational continuity of a family."

My aim is to find a solution to the problem of the funeral after disaster situation.

I designed a coffin as a storage for the corpses, which is able to isolate the infections, isolate the corpse during the putrifaction, which protect the corpse and the people who "work" with them.

The material of the product is PLA biopolimer, 100% biodegradable.

I focused on the experiences of the relatives and gave them an alternative, to keep their loved in rest and respect. - Adam Miklosi

Earth Friendly Coffin for Pets

French designer, Arthur Tricheliu has created a sustainable and user friendly coffin concept for pets.  Designed with the intent of helping children deal with their loss, the coffin has incorporated a planter on the lid.  After the coffin is 'planted' , a tree can grow in memory of the pet.   

While similar products have been proposed for the burial of cremated remains, this is the first I've seen designed for the intact burial of pets.  The round design will be appreciated by anyone who has experienced burying a pet on their own; a curled up position is sensible for pets and comforting for their human survivors.  

This kind of coffin would be more appropriate for burying on one's one land than at a formal pet cemetery.  Certainly not everyone wants to bury their own pet, but for those who do, Mr. Tricheliu's design would allow for real participation, and the comfort of an enclosed container, in an earth and pocketbook friendly product.

The coffins are still just a concept, but I can easily see the addition of a smaller model for use with cremated remains, and opportunities to market to both pet stores, veterinarians and pet funeral providers. 

If you'd like to see more of Mr. Trichelieu's work, or are interested in helping to bring this product into production, visit his site.

Designer Arthur Tricheliu

Auger Loizeau: Afterlife, and Carnivorous Domestic Entertainment Robots

Once again, the work of an artist challenges us to examine our relationship with death and the afterlife.  In this fanciful design concept, artist Auger Loizeau compels us to think about death in some novel ways.  Whether we are intriqued or repulsed by the work, we come away changed.

Afterlife from Auger-Loizeau on Vimeo.

"Many religions have their own notions of what the Afterlife or an existence after death may be, making death less final or daunting. However, as our lives become increasingly defined by technological interventions and scientific validation our increasing faith in technology has led to a decreased belief in organized religion. What then is there for the aggrieved atheist with regard to reassurance or comfort after the loss of a loved one?

With this in mind the Afterlife project offers a technologically mediated service providing a tangible expression of life after death.

The service harnesses the chemical potential of the body that would otherwise be assimilated into the natural eco-system. A modified coffin utilizes the biomass potential of the body, channeling this resource into a microbial-fuel cell housed underneath to charge dry-cell batteries via a capacitor bank.
From a metaphysical perspective the Afterlife project offers tangible proof of life after death. From the perspective of someone faced with their own mortality and for the individual going through the mourning process, utilization of the Afterlife battery in an evocative product offers psychological and emotional benefit." -Auger Loizeau

In this next design, Loizeau challenges our complicit role in creating entertainment out of death.  

Carnivorous Domestic Entertainment Robots from Auger-Loizeau on Vimeo.

"With this project we offer an alternative perspective on domestic robots, exploring the subtleties of both aesthetics and function that may elicit a symbiotic co-existence with humans in their homes."

For more of Loizeau's compelling work, visit http://www.auger-loizeau.com/

My Thanks to SevenPonds Blog for introducing me to this work.  Click here to see their post on a project that was made for an exhibit showcasing imaginative uses for the Afterlife Battery.