Body Count

Body Count started in 2019 as a photo series documenting dead bodies in daily life, irregularly rising in numbers. The depicted non-human bodies include everyday objects, mountains, plants, animals.

The concept is initiated to establish a visual vocabulary for death’s appearance, extending its human(oid) shape. In combination with their captures, the photos can (loosely) be seen as a non-human variety of the allegorical concept of medieval Dance of Death. Death’s omnipresence, randomness and ruthlessness extends the human domain in order to ask for a dance in the streets, the woods, the mountains. Death’s next-level of equalization.

Body Count led to the projects Climbing with Canetti, 2019, Ok<|>jökull Memorial Shirt, 2019, —Then | Now—, 2019, Everything Dies/ Všechno Umírá., 2020, would Flowers put fake Humans on their Graves? (in collaboration with Nadia de Vries), 2021, Lijf is Lijf (Rot op met je crematie), 2022, as well as several workshops and elective courses at art academies AHK Amsterdam and HKU Utrecht: Rouwen op het topje van de gesmolten ijsberg 2020, Een Monument is maar een Moment zonder Nu, 2021, Body Count Beyond Human Bodies, 2021, Unlearning Death (in collaboration with mortician Susanne de Boer), 2022.

Rusty metal, red sand.
Found in Namibia, Waterberg region, 05.08.2022
Dead tree (again).
Found in Amsterdam Oost, May 11, 2022.
Blue rabbit behind a fridge.
Found in Amsterdam Oost, May 7, 2022.
E-scooter Electroluted—Energie Level: Zero.
Found in Bochum (DE), April 26, 2022.
Drowned and fished out if the water. Found on the Berlagebrug at Amsterdam Amstel, April 19, 2022.
Feathers and Bones. Found at Oosteinde, Amsterdam Centre, April 15, 2022.
Dumped. Dumpster. Tilanusstraat, Amsterdam, April 5, 2022.
Uncovered body during Unlearning Death workshop (i.c.w. Susanne Duijvesteijn), February 5, 2022.
Covered body during Unlearning Death workshop (i.c.w. Susanne Duijvesteijn), February 5, 2022.
Christmas tree wrapped in a Happy Sun Death Shroud, January 2022.
Partly cremated at the beach, January 2022.
Bodies in water, not water cremation. January 2022.
Floating, January 2022.
Deerskull inklusive hunting certificate (shot in Tirol, 2012).
Found wrapped in plastic the bulky waste in front of my house in Amsterdam, October 2021.
RibCouch.
Sofa Dissection.
June 2020.
Phone Decay.
What you are, I have been. What I am, you will be.
April 2020