Dark Matter: Research on an Evolving Funerary Landscape in St. Louis, Missouri

Abstract

Dark Matter, a research by design thesis, investigates the ecological value of human remains, and their latent agency for advancing biological diversity in urban cemeteries. The project proposes an expedited aboveground decomposition process (Natural Organic Reduction) to convert human tissue and bone into nutrient-rich soil-like materials. Following decomposition, human remains merge with non-human ecologies over time to offer mourners an extended period of ceremony and remembrance. Transference of energy and matter to adjacent non-human life is emphasized in the transition, and a memorial’s embodiment in physical space is expanded to include natural systems and ecological productivity. The funerary landscape is thus decentralized from a static site of memorial to an evolving memorial system that invites engagement with the living.

In an age of pandemic, mass extinction, and deepening climate crises, a commitment to an environmentally ethical funeral practice connects the loss of the individual to global patterns of ecological ruin and environmental decline. These layered scales of grief are experienced at divergent timescales, suggesting the need for a new typology of memorial landscape that positions the human life within larger natural cycles of birth, death, decay, and metamorphosis. Rituals of commemoration, management, and activism would be alchemized to unexpected outcomes when the program of memorial, ecological preserve, and a theater for collective actions are merged. Dark Matter proposes a network of biodiverse public landscapes where bodily death events meaningfully contribute to ecological systems of propulsive regenerative life.

Keywords

Funerary Landscapes / Memorial System / Decomposition / Ecological Loss / Biodiversity

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2021 Higher Education Press