Ecstatic Corpse

2025 - Ongoing

 

Ecstatic Corpse explores the capacity for elation, sensuous relation, and excess post-expiration: the potential for ecstasy in processes of bodily decomposition. Resulting from a year of practice-based research in the woods and fields surrounding Troy, NY and in the studio, this project will result in an immersive multimedia installation. Multi-channel video of a decaying cow body shrouded in bioplastic will form the backdrop for an abstracted, exploded and decayed body cast from animal corpses and medical manikins. Undulating waves of fly and maggot sounds envelop the space. Resisting coalescence, the installation instead leans into juxtaposition, assemblage, and montage, using heterogenous audio, video, and sculptural elements to hold unresolved tension between the seeming opposites of living/ dead, soul/ matter, singular/ multiple, and preservation/ decomposition.

To date, this project has involved three areas of experimental research and practice:

  1. Auditory and visual recording of decaying cow flesh and bioplastic in a forest environment: stereo and ambisonic sound, macro and 4k video, timelapse video, and trail camera footage.

  2. Silicone molding and casting (wax, silicone, bioplastic) of found animal corpses in the area surrounding Troy, NY. Including: deer fawn, possum, pigeon, shrews.

  3. Ongoing bioplastic and biomaterials research for sculptural applications.

Sound design and composition by Senem Pirler. With thanks to Branda Miller & Steve Pierce for hosting part of the project’s development on their land.

ABOVE: footage and audio sample from the project, work in progress.

A work-in-progress installation of this work was presented at the Experimental Media and Performing Arts Center (EMPAC) in Troy, NY in March. This early version featured a two-channel scrim projection of live-mixed project footage, a 64-channel ambisonic soundscape of flies, maggots, and more recorded in the woods at the project site, and a sculptural installation featuring a fallen armchair extruding corpse ephemera: wax casts of found animal bodies (fawn, opossum, pigeon, shrews), cow bone, groundhog fur, reishi mushrooms, and a bioplastic cast of medical manikins and baby doll parts. Together, these elements explore the affective qualities of the project’s physical and audiovisual media, to inform the materialization of its next iteration.

Credit: Senem Pirler, sound design and composition.

BELOW: some initial photos, awaiting full audiovisual documentation:

THE PROCESS:

ABOVE: Parts of medical manikins and a large doll are patchworked together to make an ecstatically posed figure, which was then molded in silicone and cast in bioplastic. My ongoing experiments with different bioplastics have revealed them to be a difficult medium to cast in, due to how much they shrink as they cure. The organic transformations of this material are something I’m interested in, including the occasional ‘failures’ discovered by working with it.

ABOVE: The fragile and not fully cured bioplastic is placed in the woods, enveloping approximately 50 lbs of cow flesh acquired from a local farm. Much of the original shape of the cast was lost in this process, but the bioplastic nevertheless proved to be essential to the aesthetic of the footage resulting from filming the flesh and plastic decay together over the next couple weeks. It’s translucency is luminous at night, and makes the flies and beetles that crawled under its surface visible to the camera. Over time, the bioplastic was colonized by microorganisms: it colorfully molded, and disintegrated along with the flesh.

ABOVE: Found animal bodies were also filmed, molded in silicone, and cast in various materials (wax, bioplastic, silicone) as part of the project’s sculptural and filmic processes. These molds are one-part imprints, the final casts of which will be stitched together in a multiplicitous assemblage of bodies, co-constituting the final sculpture along with another cast of the ecstatic manikin form.

 

CREATURES FEATURED IN VIDEO &/OR SCULPTURE:

Living:

Blowfly species (Calliphoridae family); Flesh fly species (Sarcophagidae family); American Carrion Beetle (Necrophila americana); Carrion Beetle (Nicrophorus tomentosus); Gold-and-brown Rove Beetle (Ontholestes cingulatus); Sidewalk Mite (Balaustiinae spp.); Green Frog (Lithobates clamitans); Pickerel Frog (Lithobates palustris); Red-backed Salamander (Plethodon cinereus); Raven (Corvus corax); Turkey Vulture (Cathartes aura)

Dead:

Hereford cow (Bos taurus); White-tailed deer (Odocoileus virginianus); Rock Dove (pigeon) (Columba livia); Virginia Opossum (Didelphis virginiana); Northern Short-tailed Shrew (Blarina brevicauda)