Kristof Trakal: NECRONOMICS, LINCOLNS GRAVE, DATA DEATH

NECRONOMICS, LINCOLNS GRAVE, DATA DEATH was a lecture performance held in December 2016 at Savvy Contemporary as part of the group exhibition ‘Immortality for All’ on aesthetics of death culture. NECRONOMICS is an extension of one of the site-specific rehearsals of the Occult Acting Group, held at Forest Lawn Cemetery in Glendale, California. The lecture follows the critique of journalist and civil rights activist Jessica Mitford. Drawing on the economic paradigm shifts in the funerary industry in the United States – ranging from the introduction of embalming, to theme-park cemeteries like Forest Lawn, to multi-national corporations such as Service Corporation International – it questions the historic durability of Mitford’s suggestion of cremation as a an alternative to consumerist funerary practices.

Bio

Kristof Trakal is a writer, artist and filmmaker who lives in Berlin and Los Angeles. His work has been shown at Folkwang Museum Essen, Museum of Photography Berlin, Julia Stoschek Collection and Savvy Contemporary Berlin. Trakal is founder of the Occult Acting Group – a research-based site specific acting group in Los Angeles, and member of the Neoliberalism Study Group – a research collective investigating the impact of neoliberalism on specific regional contexts. Currently Trakal is Artist-in-Residence at Paradise (Tokyo).