Requiem : Stranger than Fiction — Studio Seungbin Yang

Requiem : Cabinet

PLA (Polylactic Acid), Human Skeleton, Polyester, Metal
2020
1200 (W) X 800 (L) X 1750 (H)

Ever since I was a child, I’ve always been collecting all kinds of things.

I’ve imagined stories, and enjoy creating own narratives around these objects. Storytelling was a source of my creativity and a starting point for my design process.

For me, the most valuable objects are the ones that contains its own time and history.
I savor the time by touching every trace of the object. I give new value through my im- agination of the object. These objects become part of my collection, my museum, which also holds my desire to possess. An object that has no real value is reborn through my imagination. Through the new storytelling, the audience can see the same object from a different perspective.

My desire to collect objects continued, and I ended up visiting the local mu- seum, ‘Erfgoedhuis Eindhoven’ to find out how objects were being treated. They examined the boundaries between worthless and valuable items. The museum donated me an abandoned, worthless object. They were the remains of a man, classified as ‘worthless skeleton’, because it did not contain the in- formation they wanted. An unidentified middle-aged man in the eighteenth century became my object.

Once he was a man with an identity and characters like me. A man loved by his family, a loving father of children, a person who desires something like me. I felt a sense of homogeneity and compassion for him, who had been classified as worthless as a human being.

I imagined and created his life that probably did not exist.
My imagination formed his character and recreated his life. About his appearance and life, which exist only in my head, I made graphic novels to effectively commu- nicate with others. And through the journey of his footsteps, I added new values to him and made a documentary about his life to remain in people’s memories.

I wanted to give him a place of eternal rest where he could be respected as a human being for his lonely death. I’ve designed his channel cabinet using the styles and objects from the 18th century, and the skills and materials that I could show myself as a designer in the 21st century.

Requiem : Stool

PLA (Poly Lactic Acid), Concrete
2021
500 (W) X 500 (L) X 500 (H)

Requiem : Urn

PLA (Poly Lactic Acid)
2020
350 (W) X 350 (L) X 450 (H)

Through the channel cabinet, I wanted to give death with dignity through a unique story of each person. These ideas naturally led to the design of a system that to produces urns and digital archives. This project has become the starting point for rethinking how human remains can find their last resting places that honor the lives they lived, instead of being abstract, neutral, cold encasings of their ashes.

The system allows each of the dead to produce their unique urns through cell phone applications using a camera. Through this urn, bereaved families can respect each deceased

person’s identity and leave them in their memories with their respective personalities. Simple information about the dead provided by the bereaved family and images of memorials and urns are stored as digital archives, through a specially designed website.