Without End

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One of the most important Polish contemporary artists and a precursor of critical art, working with installations, objects, photography and film.

It is uncommonly difficult to talk about death. It is always other people who die, not us. Only the living talk about death. We contemplate the nature of death, but don’t even really know precisely when it occurs!

We take it as read that the family and doctors ultimately declare someone as dead when they switch off the life support machine. But are we sure we are not killing? Even when there is no brain activity, certain processes in the body are still going. Is that death? Compared to

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Zbigniew Libera:

One of the most important Polish contemporary artists and a precursor of critical art, working with installations, objects, photography and film.

Translation: Annie Krasińska

Publish date: 03.11.2019

Also read:

Kevin Dickinson:

the columnist at Big Think and Big Think+.

Black cloak. Scythe. Skeletal grin. The Grim Reaper is the classic visage of death in Western society, but it’s far from the only one. Ancient societies personified death in a myriad of ways. Greek mythology has the winged nipper Thanatos. Norse mythology the gloomy and reclusive Hel, while Hindu traditions sport the wildly ornate King Yama.

Modern science has de-personified death, pulling back its cloak to discover a complex pattern of biological and physical processes that separate the living from the dead. But with the advent of these discoveries, in some ways, death has become more alien.

Also read:

10 New Things We’ve Learned About Death

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