No one can answer from personal experience, because when I am dead the “I” whose death is in question is no longer there. Yet death is something people think about only while alive, because it is expected, denied, feared or longed for.
The project aims to stimulate public debate about death in a free and democratic way. It brings experiences and expertise into view that matter both for society and for every individual. This includes the perspectives of public actors such as lawyers, politicians and physicians.
The authors explain that death is not merely a scientific expert term. Brain death remains controversial as a medical criterion, advance directives increase the need for interpretation, and debates about assisted dying have again intensified in Germany. Death is contested medically, legally and politically, but also in art, religion, philosophy, culture and everyday life.
The project gathers filmed interviews with thirty people: ten who define death in society, such as jurists, politicians, historians, archaeologists and journalists; ten who confront death directly, such as seriously ill, dying and elderly people; and ten who encounter the death of others, such as physicians, pathologists, chaplains, undertakers and crime-scene cleaners.
The interviews were published as clips on social networks, inviting viewers to comment and participate. Alongside the videos, a photo documentation with portraits by Olaf Schlote and accompanying research on the interviewees’ images of death were prepared. The project builds on the earlier “30 young people speak with dying people” initiative and broadens the public conversation.
