KANAZAWA EXHIBITION
DeathLAB: Democratizing Death,
July 7, 2018 - March 24, 2019
Our solo exhibition 'DeathLAB: Democratizing Death' at the SANAA-designed 21st Century Museum of Contemporary Art, in Kanazawa, Japan included DeathLAB’s Manifesto and Mission together with several design proposals demonstrating the power of design to integrate spaces of contemplation into civic life. Two monitors were dedicated to our 'Dialogue on Death' videos — interviews with architects, urban designers, scholars, heads of cemeteries, and funeral directors, edited into curated conversations addressing the ecology of death, confronting death, spaces for remembrance, and cemetery culture. The exhibition also featured a 3D printed sectional model of Constellation Park suspended from the gallery ceiling.
The exhibition was co-curated by Yohsuke Takahashi and Columbia GSAPP DeathLAB with Latent Productions, the GSAPP Makerspace, and Zhida Wu.
Exhibition photos by KIOKU Keizo, courtesy of Kanazawa 21C Museum
Statement from the Assistant Curator
"We have begun to see signs of a paradigm shift poised to revolutionize our approach to death and the city...
DeathLAB engages with this changing milieu head-on. Based at Columbia University, the team probes strategies to handle the future of death in a manner that responds to a host of complex challenges such as environment, time, and space that are inherit in the metropolis. All eyes are on this prescient 'laboratory of death,' their transdisciplinary work traversing diverse academic fields (including religious studies, architecture, environmental engineering, and biology) with global ramifications."
Yohsuke Takahashi, Assistant Curator
21st Century Museum of Contemporary Art, Kanazawa