S†ëfan Schäfer: #CyberMourning @DispersedMemorials

Lives that are lived online require a new structure of dying and death. Our digital selves have the potential to die discrete deaths, long before or after our bodies cease to be.  

Increasingly, this calls for designers and architects to explore the notion of the continuing self when considering environments for death and memorialisation - to link the physical end of life with a digital continuation.  

In this talk, S†ëfan Schäfer focuses on new rituals of grief and memorialization rooted in the digital realm and their interconnexion with the physical world, both pre- and post-internet    

S†ëfan Schäfer is an Amsterdam-based designer and researcher. His work includes self-initiated projects as well as client work, both resulting in diverse media. All projects are bound by an interest in the co-existence of the physical and the digital. He is currently working on Digital Death and the Post Mortem Self, a long-term project linking the physical end of life with a digital continuation. Together with Dr Emily West (PhD in medicine, specialised in the end-of-life care) he founded the collective Digital Necropolis [auto-playing video]. Their book I am Become Digital Death, the Destroyer of Worlds was published in October 2016.  

Schäfer's work has been exhibited at Krasnoyarsk Biennial 2017 in Siberia, Stedelijk Museum Breda, Dutch Film Festival, Dutch Design Week Eindhoven, MOTI Museum of the Image, Art Rotterdam, Vision and Sound Hilversum, World Design Capital in Cape Town, and OTIS College of Art and Design Los Angeles. With his musical project Twittercore he performed at the International Poster and Graphic Design Festival Chaumont, Chaumont – CIG, Cite du Design in St. Etienne and World Design Capital in Cape Town. Schäfer regularly lectures about his research and work on an international level.

This event is part of a series titled We Want Everything, programmed by Dr Stephen Wilson in collaboration with the ICA. The series is staged in collaboration with the ICA and the Chelsea, Camberwell and Wimbledon College of Arts postgraduate community. We Want Everything asks us to recognize the meaning of art and human life regardless of economic flows.

Given the neoliberal conditions we find our future-selves contending with, this public series of events explores human prerequisites such as citizenship, agency and the permission to experience any emotions. In an unstable field of bio-political inequalities, unconscious bias, data technologies, happiness industries and isolation, how do art and design practices maintain their love of complexity and deviation under the auspices of increased atomization?  

In collaboration with UAL, Camberwell, Chelsea and Wimbledon