Memento Mori

Notes on the work of Marielis Seyler

Usually death is excluded from everyday considerations and is not talked about in normal conversations. The last journey is in most cases only discussed on a given occasion, almost as a rule when a relative or acquaintance dies a lonely death in a sterile clinic. The reason for this may be seen in the repression of death, which has its roots in the fading of the religious, loosening of family ties, dissolution of flourishing life nexuses, urbanization that leads to anonymization and in the withdrawal into individualism. However, it is not possible to reinterpret death as a chance accident. Life defines death and this in turn defines life even if one does not want to acknowledge the connections. It is not an exaggeration to claim that myths and fairy tales have always known of the existence of temporarily suspended death. In fairy tales it is often longed for in order once and for all to put an actual end to the rigours of being and being here. In myth, however, death is a rigorous life necessity; at first through it and only through it can new life arise. To put it simply, through death the (re-) birth of the world begins.  

Marielis Seyler's works are dialogues with the conditions of fading away. She offers no patent remedy at a time when there is no generally accepted binding of expression. Through the photographic representation of animals, her works trigger an immediate consternation, as the viewer is made to witness how their physicality dissolves. However, Seyler does not conjure up a nature symbolism that indulges in a veiled hyper-beauty. For this purpose, she grants herself a clinically clean (not sterile!) look at transience. This depiction is enhanced by the inclusion of large white areas, which unavoidably fix the view on the decomposition process of a body. To increase the drama, she carefully uses natural materials such as earth, soot and wax on her photographs: materials that, as it were, model the injury, the wound. This gives the work a mysterious meaning that could not result from the photographically exact reproduction alone.

The late 20th century had no hard and fast iconography of death, and none developed during the first two decades of the 21st century. This visual voicelessness would be a topic to fill entire book series! Media conveyed images such as sunsets, paths into a wide horizon, frosted blossoms, withered roses, nocturnal moons, atmospheric clouds, defoliated avenues etc. reveal the helplessness. In sharp contrast to this, at all hours of the day via television, images of dying people and depictions of catastrophes are continuously streamed into the living room. Nonetheless, the visual fast food produced by the entertainment industry cannot replace individual grappling with death. Even news reports including their pictures of animals that are dying out, threatened ecological niches and the depletion of species do not reach the deep psychological regions of human beings, cannot induce them to deal with their own future as  mortal beings and thus also beings who are dying. On the contrary, many people want to buy their food prepared in such a way that nothing whatsoever reminds them of the animal's previous corporality.

Marielis Seyler addresses the issue of fading away, but not in the sense of an ars bene moriendi today, not in the sense of how people in full health can learn about death but rather in terms of the claim to dignity, the longing for closeness and another way of dealing with oneself. This also results in a different way of dealing with the world, which has become necessary since the invocation of patron saints who at least emotionally assisted the pious in their agony is no longer available. When in 1572 the Ave Maria was extended to include the supplication "pray for us sinners, now and at the hour of our death", the believer was able to develop the feeling that in that difficult hour Mary would spread her cloak and help. This path can no longer be followed in a society that has largely said goodbye to religion. That is why individual discussions on the subject of fading away are meaningful, even if they do not want to and cannot make general statements.

Leaving behind traditional religious ideas, which people saw as part of the world around them, offered the advantage of being able to proceed with the environment and shared world in a distant manner. There is no need to thank any deity for the blessing that a prey could be killed. There is no need for ceremonies asking for rain. It is a mistake to think that leaving behind traditional religious ideas has made humankind areligious. The opposite is the case: the ruling religion is capitalism, and money has become the only god. And this God is a merciless God because he is focused on maximizing profit. He is so strong that he can do without all ceremonies and prayers. He rules absolutely and subjugates people and their world in a way that has never existed before.

One expression of his rule is that he does not reveal himself as a personality but is found in symbols: in coins and banknotes as well as in columns of numbers. In recent years, through this new God the subject of transience has taken on new undreamed-of dimensions. It is no longer just about individual animals disappearing from the landscape due to natural death but about the loss of entire genera and species. The process has accelerated in such a way that even people who are not experts can experience it. The natural symphonies performed by insects in meadows are by far no longer suffused with their earlier orchestral breadth. Birds, which are the natural predators of insects are also becoming increasingly rare. With a wider view, it is no exaggeration to say that the many finely spun nets that interconnected individual animals through evolution are becoming increasingly porous.

To put it in terms of the systematology used in biology: if a family becomes poorer because a species disappears from a genus, the network that nature has placed over the respective habitats will not tear immediately. But too many holes cannot be closed quickly. Evolution also needs sufficient time to respond appropriately to the new circumstances. If genera and species disappear forever, suddenly every depiction of a living being becomes a memento mori -something special- because it is looked at again and recognized in its distinctiveness.

In-depth artistic consideration is a process of tenderness that is diametrically opposed to the brutality of extermination. The size of the problem of extinction can easily be shown. The number of endangered animal species is known to increase continuously worldwide. The International Union for Conservation of Nature and Natural Resources (IUCN) published a version of its Red List in 2018, in which endangered animal and plant species were collected. More than 13,000 animal species were on this Red List of Endangered Species. Biologists describe an ever faster downward turning spiral of diversity and prove this with data. In its updated Red List of July 9th 2020, the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN) now recognises 32,441 animal and plant species as threatened. That's more than ever before. Christoph Heinrich, chairman of Nature Conservation at WWF Germany said: "It is the largest extinction of species since the disappearance of the dinosaurs". And this extinction is like a global conflagration that affects the field hamster as well as the Atlantic right whale, the polar bear and several lemur species. In this species disaster, human beings play an inglorious role: on the one hand through the destruction of habitats, which means the elimination of the basis for functioning ecosystems, on the other hand only intact nature can provide food, clean water and raw materials as well as regulate the climate and be a bulwark against diseases and pandemics.

Marielis Seyler's work is aimed at the self-humanisation of human beings. This inevitably leads to ever new questions and secrets that often cannot (yet) be put into words. That is precisely Marielis Seyler's theme: the representation of what cannot yet be said, what cannot yet be named and showing one's own irritation, one's own vulnerability when the word fails or has not yet been found.