A Curious Invitation present London Month of the Dead
TECHNOLOGIES OF THE HUMAN CORPSE - From Embalming to Transhumanism and Beyond
A Live, Illustrated Zoom Talk with Dr John Troyer
Wednesday 21st October 2020 at 7:00 pm

Death and the dead body have never been more alive in the public imagination: not least because of current debates over modern medical technology that is seemingly deployed expressly to keep human bodies from dying, blurring the boundary between life and death. In his talk, Dr Troyer will explore the relationship of the dead body with technology through history, from nineteenth-century embalming machines to the death-prevention technologies of today.

Dr Troyer will describe the "Happy Death Movement" of the 1970s; the politics of HIV/AIDS corpses and the productive potential of the dead body; the provocations of the Body Worlds exhibits and their use of preserved dead bodies; the black market in human body parts; and the transformation of historic technologies of the human corpse into "death prevention technologies.”

Dr Troyer will ask you to think about death, dying, and dead bodies in radically different ways and will argue that the consequences of total control over death and the dead body are not liberation, but the abandonment of Homo sapiens as a concept and a species.

Early bird tickets are just £4 and available for a limited time only. Tickets include a 20% donation to NHS Charities Together. Please click here to purchase.

Dr John Troyer
Dr John Troyer is the Director of the Centre for Death and Society at the University of Bath (www.bath.ac.uk). He is a co-founder of the Death Reference Desk website, the Future Cemetery Project and a frequent commentator for the BBC. His forthcoming book, Technologies of the Human Corpse, will be published by the MIT Press in 2020. He grew up in the American Funeral industry.

PLEASE NOTE - This talk will take place virtually via Zoom. Ticket sales will end at 5:00 pm BST on the day of the lecture. A link to the conference will be sent to the email used at checkout at 6:00 pm BST on the day of the event. Please email suzette@acuriousinvitation.com in the event your link fails to arrive. Please note this talk will be recorded and can be sent free of charge to ticket holders by request.