Liminal Death

• During an Artistic Research Fellowship at the Smithsonian Institution in 2019 I learned from leading entomologists and mosquito specialists in the Walter Reed Biosystematics Unit, or WRBU, in Maryland. During my time there, while studying live mosquito specimens, I was captivated by what I began to call “liminal death.” These are deaths that happen during metamorphosis, right at the critical moment when the mosquito larvae emerge from their exoskeleton, moving across the border between two completely different habitats: water and air. This is such a fascinating process. It was almost like seeing the birth of a human baby except for a big difference: the mosquito is much more active in this process compared to a human baby. They step out of their larval exoskeleton and this needs to happen very quickly, because otherwise they risk drowning. So not all of them would make it. Some, like you can see in this specimen, would emerge head and wings first, but would never step out of their larval shell before it’s too late. So death here is a death in process, frozen in time, preserved in ethanol. This makes me think of my grandfather’s death. My grandfather was disappeared in 1965, and was never returned. So his death was underway and unfinished: his body was never found, so, in fear, my family preserved their hope - and was suspended by this hope – that he was still alive. We are aware that there is no hope that he was still alive, but in the sake of keeping hope in a sea of fear and hopelessness, we decided not to know, to preserve our hope. Talking about preservation: ethanol preserves specimens quite well, but may alter the specimens’ original appearance. Over time, ethanol can also evaporate, affecting the preservation of the specimens. This is another way to say that time heals: it does something to memory. Healing can be thought of as a sort of modification to one’s memory, reimagined in its relation to emotion. But still, my grandfather never really died. He has a liminal death.

Ämnesord

NATURVETENSKAP  -- Biologi -- Zoologi (hsv//swe)

NATURAL SCIENCES  -- Biological Sciences -- Zoology (hsv//eng)

HUMANIORA  -- Konst -- Bildkonst (hsv//swe)

HUMANITIES  -- Arts -- Visual Arts (hsv//eng)

Publikations- och innehållstyp

vet (ämneskategori)

kfu (ämneskategori)