Afterlife for Atheists

Where religions promise their believers a life after death and cryonics also needs a kind of belief in future technological development, designers James Auger and Jimmy Loizeau are working on a project providing reassurance on life after death.

After death the human body is assimilated back to its basic building blocks: the elements. The Afterlife concept intervenes in this process by saving the energy that is released during the assimilation. This energy is contained in an ordinary dry cell battery which can be used according to the last wishes of the deceased.

To evaluate the project, Auger and Loizeau asked people what they would want to do with the memorial energy provided by their deceased self, partner or family. One person answered, for instance, he would like to realise his dream to fly and a couple answered they would use the energy of the death partner for a suicide machine that can be used when the period of mourning is too much to handle.

The Afterlife project is exhibited until the 26^th of Februari 2012 at the “New Energy in Art and Design” exposition in the Van Boijmans Museum in Rotterdam, The Netherlands.

Picture and movie via Auger-Loizeau