The project
Eventually, we all die. The present project stipulates that this fact constitutes the origin of human conceptions of time. The project proposes that human experiences and conceptions of time inherently hinge on the material world, and that time as a socially experienced phenomenon cannot be understood as separate from material form or expression. What role, then, does death as a material phenomenon play in different conceptualisations of time and in constituting particular time frames and sensibilities towards the passing of human life? This is the question we set out to explore through a number of anthropological and archaeological studies.

Crossdisciplinarity and design experiments
In exploring the project’s key question, we bring together anthropologists and archaeologists, who are going to conduct research in the traditional sense, but will also collaborate with museum designers and groups of audiences to create material experiences of the intersection of death, time and materiality. We seek to reclaim the museum as a laboratory for exploration and curiosity, where research is not simply done for then to be communicated, but where knowledge itself is produced and discovered through experimental design strategies and material displays. Museum of Cultural History in Oslo will be the platform for this cross-disciplinary experiment in research, method and exhibition-making.

The project is a collaboration between University of Aarhus, Museum of Cultural History in Oslo and Moesgaard Museum in Aarhus. The project is supported by a grant from the Sapere Aude career program under the Danish Council for Independent Research.