The Bratislava BAK Summer Spring School , titled Art During Death , is a five-part series of podcasts, audio artworks, lectures, and radio plays from artists, theorists, and other cultural practitioners who have assembled a collective soundscape, driven by the urgencies brought about by the global Covid pandemic. All contributions are available in a form of a sound archive. You can find them on Apple Podcasts , Soundcloud , Spotify and other platforms. Shaped both within and in spite of the present-day pandemic conditions, Art During Death addresses the notions of death, dying, and bereavement.
Geared toward preservation of life through scientific progress and medical advancement, western-modern societies have pathologized and decontextualized death from the reality of our lives-relegating it to the realm of denial, incomprehensibility, and unspeakable taboo.
As the current pandemonium-propelled death shapes the common experience of contemporary history, the series poses a seemingly paradoxal question: how does one live this death otherwise? Art During Death engages with these phases propositionally, and scours the cracks, fissures, and distortions of the pandemic for places where the vulnerability, materiality, and finitude of human bodies can be acknowledged, and where the severed link between life and death can be restored.
For further questions, please contact info bratislavabaksummerschool. The website has been administered by Juraj Mydla. It is claimed that the subject about to die will begin in denial as a step along the path of dying. It is further claimed that death is also the object of collective disavowal.
Mortality, some will say, is treated as a social embarrassment to be discreetly managed and politely put away. And yet, the giddy tally of the dead jostles for screen-time with all its graphic matter-of-fact-ness.
