In 2019 I had the misfortune of seeing two dead bodies, one of a friend who died in a bicycle accident, the other of a homeless man who lived in the entrance of my house and died of natural causes. The circumstances under which I saw the bodies couldn’t be more different. My friend was in an open casket at a funeral home, she was dressed in an unusual shirt and her hair was styled unlike I’d ever seen it. The homeless man was stripped of all his clothes and lay on a dirty concrete floor, his naked body deep in a state of rigor mortis. Despite the differences in presentation, one simple fact became very clear to me: after death we lose all agency over our bodies, whether it be the styling of our hair, or to whom our naked body is revealed.

The performance took place in a black box theater, and began as I crossed over to an arrangement of sound equipment and created a layered vocal loop, which I then added to throughout the rest of the performance. Next, I rolled out white paper on the black floor to create a painting surface. Once the surface had been prepared, I changed from black to white clothes and donned a light blond wig. Using a bucket of black paint and a brush, I outlined a large circle on the ground and began to fill it in using the blond wig as a brush. Once the circle was finished I spoke the words “no dignity in death” into a microphone connected to a delay pedal and waited in the middle, looking out into the audience as the sound faded out over three minutes.