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.