Tomorrow’s Heads continues Stine Deja’s art exploring cryopreservation, which is the business of deep-freezing humans – the entire body or just the head – after death, with the hope that advanced future medical technologies will be able to revive them. Deja has collaborated with writer Ida Marie Hede to explore the more mundane elements of this futuristic enterprise. The practice of preserving people for a future second life is futuristic, bordering on science fiction – however, the potential practicalities of such a task, when detailed in a farcical job description, are quite brutal, hands-on, and grim. As we explore the contrast of scientific promise with the brutal reality of the work required to realise such a future, we are invited to question who benefits from whose labor, what it means to be qualified for a job, and which bets are worth making about the kind of future we might have.
In Stine Deja’s own words: “I look a lot at the technologies that have the power to change us, our habits, interests, our inner beings, our life expectancy, as well as the very biology we share. These technologies are interesting to me, as they can kind of outline a future for us, and they express who we are right now. The tech/tools we develop reveals a lot about what our desires are and what kind of society we are striving towards. With new digital technologies creeping under our skin, it forces us to question what it means to be human?
I’ve looked a lot at Cryonics, IVF, CRISPR and recently I’ve been looking into these new tests in a military site in China, where they infuse tardigrade stem cells into humans, to see if it will make us more resilient beings. Somehow my work becomes one long investigative narrative, driven by society’s inventions and desires.”
Supported by Statens Kunstfond, Fake Foundation, and Brødrene Hartmanns Fond
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