MUERTE
CONTENTS
01
Introduction
05
A temple to kill the one(s) you love
06
Sacrificio
14
Architecture to die
22
A personal temple
28
Crime of passion
30
Brion Cemetery
40
Death Slam
42
Credits
A TEMPLE TO KILL THE ONE(S) YOU LOVE
MUERTE A temple to kill the one(s) you love #2 October 2018 Editor: Ernesto Perez Rea Junca
Previous page and cover: Heart extraction representation details from a lateral view. Redrawn by Andrea Tiesler from Najera, 1987.
MUERTE
We don’t want to die. Nowadays we are surrounded by a term that bombs us in our everyday life: wellness. We are obsessed with prolonging life - eat clean, quit drinking, take drugs under medical control, exercise, reduce stress, yoga- do everything possible to expand our lifespan the most until our mind doesn’t realize we are dying anymore. 21st century generations avoid talking about death as if denying it will erase the only certainty we have the moment we are born. In 2014, Dying Matters, a British coalition of individual and organisational members which aims to help people talk more openly about dying, death and bereavement, made a survey in which eight of ten people were found uncomfortable talking about dying and death. The “demonization” of death is quite recent; according to the philanthropist Satish Modi, “In the late 19th century, the standard of life used to be much lower and people died much earlier. The time people had on this planet was very limited – the average life expectancy was around 48 [by 1901]. Nowadays people can expect to live into the high 90s. In the Victorian era, people understood that they had little time left to live a life, and they confronted and talked about mortality, operations and medicine as people around them died. Now the lifespan has increased, people don’t talk about it.”
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In ancient societies, there was always a ritual for death events. People followed its procedures and learned from it, they spent their whole life preparing for its biggest life event. Since the very beginning of human kind, societies developed and built pyramids, tombs, mausoleums, mastabas, among many other typologies of funerary architecture. Now we are completely unprepared for death as if its denial will save us from it. Maybe its got something to do with our capitalist system kind of society this constant denial. Death depresses the market, it doesn’t sell. Death removes customers from the marketplace and sadness other customers, it’s not affordable. There is a necessity to remove death from the contemporary city: “no mourning, no funerals anymore. Traffic cannot stop, shops cannot close. No Lent, no Muharram. Always Christmas, always Mardi Gras.” (San Rocco Magazine) Death is essential. Without death there is no meaning or importance in anything we do. Our limited time transforms goals into achievements and achievements into transcendence. What meaning would life have without dead? Peter Saul, an emergency doctor, in a conference in 2011, showed graphs about four different ways of death and how common it is each of those nowadays: Sudden death, which has become very rare. Terminal illness, which happens to younger people, since by the time you’ve reached 80 this is unlikely to happen anymore, only one of ten people will die of cancer. The big growth industry are organ failure and frailty. The first one, means an admission to an intensive care hospital in which at some point someone says enough is enough and the doctors stop. The second one is the most common in our time (6 out of 10 people will die of this) which is the dwindling of capacity. A candle light fading away. The void is waiting. We must be conscious of how the worst thing that could possibly
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happen, will happen. The end of our individual world. A personal apocalypse.
MUERTE is a fanzine that confronts death, which is published monthly. It is designed for a four months plan, in which each of the four editions will speak about death related topics approached from architecture, design, photography, philosophy and literature. MUERTE aims to explore the relation between human and death with the premise that its crucial for our society to prepare and confront for the inevitable.
(Publication themes are being selected from the Call For Papers of San Rocco’s Magazine.)
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Achilles cradles Penthesilea in his arms after killing her. Image from the Museum Syndicate
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A TEMPLE TO KILL THE ONE(S) YOU LOVE
Imagine you did not want to leave your parents in the hands of a bureaucracy specializing in death. Imagine taking responsibility for their departure from life. Imagine this becomes a kind of private ritual, in which you meet your mother or father (or wife or husband) for the last time before killing them. Imagine these actions need places to happen. What would these places look like? A temple to kill the one(s) you love.
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SA
I FIC IO
CR
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Previous pages: Left: Rendering of a Maya sacrifice at Chichen Itza. AmericanEgyp. 2008 Right: Reinterpretation of Mayan Sacrifice. Milenio.
Since ancient times, there has always been rituals that seek taking things valuable for the human being, including their own lives, to offer them to a higher power, most of the time, gods. This sacrifices in the form of state-organized rituals have been observed in many societies throughout history. We will focus punctually in pre-Hispanic sacrifice rituals, but it is important to mention how these rituals where also made in other cultures such as the Shang dynasty in the 10th Century BCE in China. Diego de Landa in Yucatan Before and after the Conquest, makes a description of what a human sacrifice consisted of in the ancient Mayan civilization:
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“When they arrived before the demon, all the people went through a solemn dance with him around the wooden pillar, all with bows and arrows, and then dancing raised him upon it, tied him, all continuing to dance and took at him. The impure priest, ventured, ascended and whether it was mars or woman wounded the victim in the private parts with an arrow, and then 95 descended and anointed the face of the demon with the blood he had drawn; then making a sign to the dancers, they began in order as they passed rapidly, dancing, to shoot an arrow to the victim’s heart, shown by a white mark, and quickly made of his chest a single point, like a hedgehog of arrows. If his heart was to be taken out, they conducted him with great display and concourse of people, painted blue and wearing his miter, and placed him on the rounded sacrificial stone, after the priest and his officers had anointed the stone with blue and purified the temple to drive away the
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evil spirit. The chacs then seized the poor victim and swiftly laid him on his back across the stone, and the four took hold of his arms and legs, spreading them out. Then the flacon executioner came, with a flint knife in his hand, and with great skill made an incision between the ribs on the left side, below the nipple; then he plunged in his hand and like a ravenous tiger tore out the living heart, which he laid on a plate and gave to the priest; he then quickly went and anointed the faces of the idols with that fresh blood.1
1 Yucatan Before and After the Conquest. Diego de Landa. GlobalGrey Ed. 2018 2 The Ancient Maya. Robert J. Sharer and Loa P. Traxler. 6th Edition. 2005. 3 noun. A deep natural well or sinkhole, especially in Central America, formed by the collapse of surface limestone that exposes ground water underneath, and sometimes used by the ancient Mayans for sacrificial offerings.
Next page: Altar Q from Copan, Honduras. Adalberto Hernandez de Vega.
In the Mayan culture, blood was viewed as a potent source of nourishment for the Maya deities, and the sacrifice of a living creature was a powerful blood offering. By extension, the sacrifice of a human life was the ultimate offering of blood to the gods, and the most important Maya rituals culminated in human sacrifice. Generally, only high-status prisoners of war were sacrificed, with lower status captives being used for labour.2 Different methods were employed for making these sacrifices, ranging from decapitations, heart removal, arrow sacrifice, drowning in a cenote3 and alive entombing to accompany a noble burial, between many others. Most of these events, took place in an architectural space which was designed specifically for the ritual: a temple. These temples were known as pyramids which apart of being focal points for Maya religious practices where offerings were made to the gods,
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they also staged the sacrifice ritual. Serving as well as gigantic tombs for deceased rulers, their partners, and for precious goods.4 This means that one of the functions and “programme” you should consider when building the pyramids was a space for a murder. More specifically: a piece of furniture with ergonomic and physiological qualities focused on how to decapitate or remove a human heart publicly, and since it’s an offering to the gods, find a way to turn a simple masonry table to a beautiful, respectful and myth-telling sculpture, giving it a symbolic meaning. It would pass from being a simple carved stone to a sacred element capable of connecting our world with the sacred one. Dear reader, how would a masonry table, used to murder a human on behalf of the capitalism and consumerism gods that rule nowadays, be designed? Which place would be the perfect space for that altar to be in? What conditions would make it a sacred ritual with a strong symbolism behind the death act?
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4 Maya Architecture. Mark Cartwright. Ancient History Encylopedia. 2015
RIFICIO SACRIF SACRIFICIO SA CRIFICIO SACRI ICIO SACRIFICI RIFICIO SACRIF SACRIFICIO SA ICIO SACRIFICI CRIFICIO SACRI
FICIO SACRIFIC ACRIFICIO SACR IFICIO SACRIF IO SACRIFICIO FICIO SACRIFI ACRIFICIO SACR IO SACRIFICIO IFICIO SACRIFI
Architecture to die
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Have you ever thought the existing relationship between death and architecture? Is it the same dying in a white walled room than in the courtyard of countryside house? Alison Killing, a British architect and urban designer, created in 2010 a studio called Killing Architects which analyses the relationship between death and architecture. During the summer of 2014, she made an exhibition on this theme in Venice called Death in Venice. The exhibition portrayed an investigation she had done for two years about death and dying and how both have shaped our cities and the buildings within them. In 2014, she made a TED Talk5 about the influence the architectural space has on death. She begins speaking of how a hundred years ago we use to die of many infectious diseases that would kill us quite quickly. We used to die at home, in our beds, surrounded by our loved ones and it was the default option since most of the population lacked access to medical care. Then, during the 20th century everything changed radically. We began to develop medicines such as penicillin and new medical technologies like the x-ray and since “we needed large, centralized buildings to keep them in, and they became our modern hospitals.”6
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5 There is a better way to die, and architecture can help. Allison Killing. TED Talk. 2014 6 There is a better way to die, and architecture can help. Allison Killing. TED Talk. 2014
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After the WWII, loads of countries implemented healthcare systems which, consequently, expanded the lifespan from about 45 years to almost the double in just 100 years, increasing the optimism towards science focusing on life but ignoring death. Nowadays we are most likely to die of a disease such as cancer which means a long time of chronic illness before perishing were most of our final time will be spent in hospitals. Therefore, hospitals will be our death setting. How is our death stage now then? White walled rooms with fluorescent lights, long polished corridors were the only noises you hear are digital sounds coming out of different machines, hundreds of rooms and floors which become a never-ending labyrinth and somewhere were you spend all your life savings trying to survive and avoid the unavoidable. Depressing. This wasn’t always like this, during the renaissance, Filippo Brunelleschi, one of the most important and influential architects of all time, also known as the first formally known architect, built in 1419 the Innocents Hospital. Even though it was an orphanage for abandoned children in Florence, Killing invites us to analyse this building if we want better spaces for dying.
Next page: Middle: Ospedale degli Innocenti by Lawrence Kahn. AAPPublications. Bottom: Facade Reconstruction for the Hospital Affiliated with BJUT. United Design U10 Atelier.
The building’s entrance takes you to a courtyard which articulates the whole building, from here, you can go to different spaces which at the end take you back to the opened centre or the adjoining. This means that no matter which room you are in, you always have natural light and fresh air coming into the room. Since death has become a taboo which no one wants to speak about, we cannot discuss publicly topics like this. How can we create a better architecture for leaving this world if we don’t want to accept it and talk about it?
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“There is an urgent need to discuss and redesign our hospitals along with the healthcare spaces, keeping always in mind that this might be the transition temple in which many people will presence their end.”
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Architecture to murder: Reinterpretation of Vicenzo Camuccini's painting Death of Cesar
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A personal temple
The next essays where written by three different people which where given an abstract about “A temple to kill the one(s) you love” (see page 05). These are their personal temples. Personal thoughts, which are reflected on what they believe this process and space would be like. Drawings by: Ernesto Perez Rea Junca
Renato Vazquez. Architect.
I cannot understand when and how I arrived. The sun is scorching and almost unbearable, the shadows do not exist but my search for a direction is unattainable. I know the reason for my presence in this place, but I avoid and deny it every passing second. I can see in the distance a rare dark imprecise form. For an instant, I think its death, but I still do not know what it is. It transmits me fear. I walk, I run towards her, the sun is more intense, the time gets shorter and my bare feet suffer the heat of the earth where certain puddles of water help me to alleviate this storm. It is my father with my mother, I stop, I lose the urge to walk, my steps are heavy, I know it will be the end of our relationship and I feel guilty for having to carry their deaths and how could I... sell them. I reach them, our eyes meet, and through their eyes, my perspective of things begin to change. The void which seemed desolate
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and sad, now is everything, now it makes sense to me. There are very high walls which surround us, they seem to be made of rammed earth or at least that’s what I think due to their grain composition, but at the same time they are solid and hard as the stone is. The sun is no longer a problem, its light has changed course and has moved away from us. The water runs through our feet and relieves the burning sensation my soul feels. I do sense this space as physical but as celestial, and I lose the guilt of what I have come to perform.
My father cries to heaven, to God, to forgive me; it is the beginning of this end and the end of a story. The walls seem to approach us, the space decreases and forces us to get even closer. I look at both, our lips are inert and without movement, we no longer speak anything, it is time to leave and leave them behind. I give a last hug that allows me to stay with them eternally, I close my eyes and wait for everything to happen. Wait for this moment to pass. Time speaks for itself, the earth rises in the wind, along with my father and mother, that’s how I feel them depart. Leaving me again alone and in the eternal nothingness.
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Juan Carlos León. Law Student.
The leaves fall next to the cold and stubborn drops of the afternoon breeze. On the riverbank, safe and intemperate, the redoubled notes of the hidden owl make their ricochet between your naked forehead and the rough old trunk next to you. The long winter music sounds; the music of the lost heat recovered in your arms that, without hesitation, tells a story of love concentrated in the most pleasant memories of an increasingly fleeting present. We walk together towards the pier that faces downstream. Towards the intestate destiny of the old souls where the rejoicing is pure and the light: white. To the smell of the late aroma, your energy buries its last sighs between the earth and the tall flowers that will always adorn your days. Your joy fades. Your songs have become melancholic memories of the never forgotten past. The tears of your tired trousseau epitomize the eternal hours of laughter, tears and cuddles; but they go, like the rain to the watercourse. The cherry sky begins to finish its reflection among the branches of the trees that keep the leaves of what would be your last spring. The threat of the outgoing moon begins to be reflected in the increasingly crystalline surface of the river that your never-returning ship leaves behind. Our natural silence cuddles the roar of the eternal green. The words are spare. We arrived at the dock. You don’t need anything else. You leave.
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Kelly Dix Van. Architecture Student
A temple to kill the one(s) you love. To the average person, said temple is unimaginable. It a a difficult task to decide on the setting in which you will kill your loved ones. These places must then be detached, places that show no immediate emotion, but at the same time do create a feeling that goes further than the act of killing. Therefore, these places have to be completely different one from another, so that they’re able to create a bond, a connection for a future life, while they reminisce on what was lived prior to that moment. The most difficult aspect would be setting the mood, is it... Anger? Fear? Sadness? Loneliness? Despair? One would have to create that temple around that specific mood.
Next page: Teshima Art Museum by JA+U
A temple to kill the one(s) you love, is a difficult task at hand. Even so, if I had to think on one of these temples directed to a loved one, one would then begin with the interior space and it’s importance, an isolated place where privacy is key. Therefore, the temple must have specific light entrances that aren’t gateways from the outside, possibly on the ceiling or places above the human observation point. It must be quiet, peaceful, and private. So that the two characters at play are as comfortable as it can be. The lighting must be warm, cozy and at indirect points. The walls have to be dark colored so that the temple feels enclosed, and therefore isolated. The furniture must be simple and comfortable, as minimum of it as posible, only the essentials. The temple will be filled with little things, lots of them. Things that remember the life of the person being murdered and the memories and experiences lived between the two. People carry little artifacts all their life that are filled with emotional attachment because they represent a memory, a moment of their life.
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Next page: Madame Caillaux kills Monsieur Gaston Calmette, director of Le Figa ro. Le Petit Journal Cover. 29 March 1914
A crime committed while in the throes of passion, with no opportunity to reflect on what is happening and what the person is about to do. For example, a husband who discovers his wife in bed with a lover and who attacks and kills the lover in a blind rage has committed a crime of passion. Because the husband has been overcome with emotion, he lacks the specific intent to kill, which is necessary for a conviction of murder. If a jury believes that he acted in the heat of passion, they will convict him only of manslaughter, which does not require an intent to kill. A crime committed while in the throes of passion, with no opportunity to reflect on what is happening and what the person is about to do. For example, a husband who discovers his wife in bed with a lover and who attacks and kills the lover in a blind rage has committed a crime of passion. Because the husband has been overcome with emotion, he lacks the specific intent to kill, which is necessary for a conviction of murder. If a jury believes that he acted in the heat of passion, they will convict him only of manslaughter, which does not require an intent to kill.
Definition from Nolo’s Plain-English Law Dictionary
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Brion Cemetery
Photo-essay: Text and photographs by Ernesto Perez Rea Junca 7 The Eyes of the Skin: Architec ture and the Senses, Juhani Pallasmaa (2012). p.77, John Wiley & Sons
If a temple to kill the ones you love was an existing building on earth, definitely Scarpa’s burial complex on the north of Itay, Tomba Brion, would be one of the venues to carry out the earthly-ethereal transition. Speaking of sensorial architecture and an architecture of details, Carlo Scarpa (1906-1978) was one of the pioneers on the field. In 1968, he received a project which would solidify all his ideologies, a cemetery for the Brion family which is articulated by different architectural elements as a chapel, tombs, a water pavilion, gardens, between many others. All the necessary elements which symbolize the marriage between life and death. As you walk through the complex, you find yourself discovering new passages and paths which become different sensorial experiences for all human senses. One of Scarpa’s colleagues, in an interview about Scarpa, he mentioned the impossibility to visit one of the architect’s works with your hands in your pockets. It is such a strong corporeal experience that you must use even the sense of tact to understand and live his architecture. Juhani Pallasmaa says “architecture is the art of reconciliation between us and the world, and this mediation takes place through the senses”.7 A reconciliation Scarpa achieves in his work. On the other side, the use of different natural elements as light, water, sound, depth, and perspective, there isn’t a single space without an emotional weight. Ethereal architecture. Spiritual Architecture. You never stop discovering, when you think you’ve finished, you • 30 •
go closer and find something new. Architecture inside architecture, details within details. Everything is so thought that it is seems that it has been there since the beginning of humankind. There isn’t a single thing which doesn’t belong to its place. If there was a temple to kill our loved ones, definitely it would be like this. A symbiotic space between life and death.
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DEATH SLAM BY IRENE TREJO
A black wrapped tamal jumping from hand to hand. An ending celebration to a body that has left us by. No need for tears or fears spreading out. The party just started, everyone is invited to be part of the death slam. Only requisite to participate is a black cloth, a shiny cuffing, and to most conveniently, die.
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Credits
Editor: Ernesto Perez Rea Junca Contributors: Renato Vasquez, Juan Carlos Leon, Kelly Dix Van and Irene Trejo
References 1 Yucatan Before and After the Conquest. Diego de Landa. GlobalGrey Ed. 2018 2 The Ancient Maya. Robert J. Sharer and Loa P. Traxler. 6th Edition. 2005. 3 noun. A deep natural well or sinkhole, especially in Central America, formed by the collapse of surface limestone that exposes ground water underneath, and sometimes used by the ancient Mayans for sacrificial offerings. 4 Maya Architecture. Mark Cartwright. Ancient History Encylopedia. 2015 5 There is a better way to die, and architecture can help. Allison Killing. TED Talk. 2014 6 There is a better way to die, and architecture can help. Allison Killing. TED Talk. 2014 7 The Eyes of the Skin: Architecture and the Senses. Juhani Pallasmaa (2012). p.77, John Wiley & Sons
All images references are specified on the text. If you would like to contribute to MUERTE, please contact the editor on: ernestoprj@hotmail.com • 42 •
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