Bennie Meek

Department: Man and Public space

Death is Natural

In our culture today we tend to avoid coming into contact with death as much as possible. However, Bennie Meek sees death as something natural that we should not hide. In Death is Natural, he has come up with a new ritual, in which the dead are not buried or cremated, but left behind in nature, where they will be restored to the cycle of nature, a process which can take as little as three weeks. He has designed the walls to surround three such places. For the Veluwe area, he uses casts made from pieces of bark as his building blocks; in the Engelsmansplaat area a reflective wall made of steel creates a link between the water and the sky; and near the Lauwersmeer the oblong building blocks refer to the division of the land in the polder landscape.