Valerie’s New York interview with John Troyer on Memorial Tattoos
WOR 710 AM (August 4, 2010)
Here is the link for the radio interview I did on with Valerie Smaldone on Valerie’s New York . I start discussing Memorial Tattoos about 17:30 minutes into the interview.
The piece before me is on an event promoter offering free tickets to shows when people get his logo tattooed onto their body. Good times.
Valerie asked good questions.
I look forward to a return visit to Valerie’s New York.
Morbid Ink: Field Notes on the Human Memorial Tattoo
An Illustrated Lecture with Dr. John Troyer, Deputy Director, Centre for Death and Society, University of Bath
Date: Tuesday July 20th, 2010
Time: 8:00pm
Admission: $5
On Tuesday, July 20 I am giving a talk in Brooklyn on memorial tattoos. The talk, Morbid Ink: Field Notes on the Human Memorial Tattoo, focuses on research that I have been doing for a number of years. Many thanks to Joanna Ebenstein who runs the Morbid Anatomy Library for inviting me to speak.
The academic side of this research has really only taken place during the last year. But the tattoo side of my work started in 1994 when I got my first memorial tattoo for my maternal grandfather. Since 1994, I have gotten a tattoo for each of my grandparents, in the order of their deaths, down my spine. I went to the same tattoo artist for each of the tattoos, Awen Briem, and you can see her work at her studio Art With a Point. In 2008, I got tattoos for both my parents (who are still alive) as a way of honoring them before they die. Each of these tattoos is a 1/4 long sleeve down both my left and right arms. Awen did an amazing job with these tattoos too.
All of this is to say that I have spent hours and hours (and more hours…) thinking and talking with Awen about why people get tattoos. It became apparent, based purely on Awen’s anecdotes, that memorial tattoos were becoming more and more common. In case you are looking for a definition, the Memorial Tattoo is most easily described as a tattoo which a person gets after someone they know dies. The deceased can be a good friend, a spouse, sibling, lover, etc. Now, the memorial tattoo can also be for a dead pet and I see this kind of tattoo more and more. Indeed, Awen ran some numbers and roughly 50% of her memorial tattoos are for pets. This all makes sense to me since pets became a companion species for humans long ago.
The talk on July 20th will discuss a variety of issues which I think memorial tattoos produce. Some of these issues include how meaning is assigned to a memorial tattoo, what marking a living body with representations of death entails, and current innovations in memorial tattooing.
I will also talk about the strange and peculiar avenues this particular research interest has taken me down. My favorite example is that the Death Reference Desk has itself become part of my research.
Last July, I posted an article on Death Ref about a gentleman who got cremated human remains mixed into the ink used for a memorial tattoo. As a result of that post, the Death Reference Desk has started receiving questions about the ins and outs of mixing cremated remains into tattoo ink.
And since Death Ref has always functioned as a reference desk, Meg, Kim and myself have responded to all the queries. Meg, in particular, has gone to great lengths to answer these questions and those responses are still available here: Using Cremains in Memorial Tattoos. You can also find more on memorial tattoos here.
It turns out that quite a few people have thought about/are thinking about mixing a pinch of human ash (almost always from the deceased) into the ink being used for a specific memorial tattoo.
I’m not surprised in the least. Within the logic of why people get memorial tattoos, it makes complete sense.
If you are in the Brooklyn area Tuesday and/or know someone who is, then send them to the Morbid Anatomy Library at 543 Union Street, Brooklyn, New York 11215 for the talk.
Believe it or not, the Death Reference Desk officially launched a year ago last July (with some content seeded in June to get us started). Gadzooks!
It all started when death and dying practices professor John approached librarian Meg about setting up a site where he could post death-related news links that he would otherwise put on Facebook or email to friends (and which friends, including librarian Kim, would constantly email to him). After much brainstorming — including the librarians pulling in the reference service idea — Meg created the site in a caffeine-induced fever dream. The rest is less history than designing the future.
Here are our most popular posts to date!
1,258 — Premature Burial Device Patents
1,021 — Dead Bodies Having Sex: the Backstory
989 — Deathly Art at DIA
757 — Blue Screen of Death… Memorial Tattoo?
661 — The Impossibility of Identifying the Dead in Haiti
And the top five search strings:
373 — memorial tattoos
268 — death reference desk
204 — corpse flower
123 — death masks of famous people
95 — memorial tattoo
Two deal with memorial tattoos, and there are many other tattoo-themed search terms that send people to our site: “memorial tattoo ideas,” “memorial tattoo designs,” “cremation tattoo” and many more. This is a pet interest of John’s, in fact, he’ll be speaking about memorial tattoos at a public lecture July 20th in New York City. He’ll post more about this soon, but here are the vitals in the meantime.
Hey! We now have a Facebook Page! Ironically, or perhaps just “finally,” we have come back around to posting content on Facebook, now with our own group page. Like us, love us and confuse all your stalkers trolling your Likes and Interests!
And don’t forget our DeathRef Twitter account, affectionately called the Death Feed. While we tweet links to our own posts here, we also throw out additional content that we don’t have the time or inclination to write full posts about. In addition, we have internal editorial guidelines / a collection and redistribution policy so to speak, known colloquially as “taste,” that prevents us from wallowing in schlocky, scandalous content on the DRD website (Pets Eat Dead Owner! 50 Wacky Coffins! and so forth). But some of that stuff still makes the Twitter Death Feed just for the heck of it, and it’s a good way to say yep, we’re still here, even when posts are long in coming.
Which brings us to… sometimes posts are long in coming. As our About page says, we suffer full-time jobs and part-time lives, and it’s also sum-sum-summah time! Rather than All DeathRef, All the Time, we’ve been dragging our pasty carcasses out into the sunshine. You should try it. It’s awesome.
Also of note: despite the low count in the DeathRef Questions category, Kim and Meg actually do field reference questions, usually one or two per month, but most of them are private issues that overlap legal and medical concerns that we don’t post for reasons of confidentiality. (We’re also not doctors or lawyers and can’t give related advice, but we do try to track down appropriate, useful services local to the patron.)
It’s been a great year, folks — we look forward to many more!
No Camels, Er, Unleashed Dogs Allowed in Cemetery
Katie Mercer, The Province (March 25, 2010)
This is normally the sort of story I’d tweet, but after my columbaria tour one sweltering Vancouver Saturday, I have a soft spot in my heart for Mountain View Cemetery. In an effort to get visitors to actually read (and hopefully heed) a sign, the City of Vancouver got silly:
No elephants.
No camels.
No dogs without leashes.
Dogs with leashes = OK.
According to the Province article,
“I hope the ‘no elephants’ policy provides a gentle reminder to others to keep the leash on their dogs,” [cemetery manager Glen Hodges] added.
The cemetery is the only one in the Lower Mainland that officially allows dogs on their grounds.
Hmm, I wonder about leashed camels…
The sign was designed by cemetery booster and civic historian John Atkin, who in small-world coincidental fashion was my tour guide last summer. For those in Vancouver he recommends an upcoming, day-long forum at Mountain View on April 24: The Final Disposition: De-Mystifying Death, Funerals, Cemeteries & Ceremonies. From the cemetery’s homepage:
A forum designed to address practical and philosophical matters on dying and death. Discussion begins with hospice care and continues with the role of funeral homes and cemeteries. Alternative options such as green burial and the importance of ritual and ceremony will end the day.
Wish I were there!
The Death Reference Desk’s good friend Joanna Ebenstein at the Morbid Anatomy Library in Brooklyn is into the hipper, cooler, creepier side of dead stuff. That’s why Death Ref likes her so much.
So when Joanna invited me to give a talk on Monday, October 26 at the Morbid Anatomy Library I said YES YES YES.
But the whole story gets even better. I know. Who knew it was possible?
Instead of my usual death…death…dead bodies…bla bla bla action I am giving a talk on the Creation Museum in Petersburg, KY. The talk is full of hot human on dinosaur action and I have photos and video to boot.
Come on down to the Morbid Anatomy Library and be SAVED!!!!
Here is the official announcement:
Morbid Anatomy Presents at Observatory:
“Humans riding on the backs of Dinosaurs: A walk through the Creation Museum in Petersburg, Kentucky USA.”
by John Erik Troyer, Ph.D., Centre for Death and Society, University of Bath
Date: Monday October 26th
Time: 7:30 PM (doors at 7:00 PM) *please note earlier than usual start time*
Admission: $5
In May 2007, the twenty-seven million dollar Creation Museum opened in Petersburg, Kentucky. The museum is dedicated to representing a “young earth,” Christian explanation of the planet, which makes the known universe roughly 6-10,000 years old. Within the museum, visitors can view a large-scale Garden of Eden diorama, a fully loaded planetarium, and animatronic dinosaurs. Since opening, well over 835,000 people have visited the museum. The Creation Museum is a key player in what Troyer calls the American Science War and is part of an ongoing battle between advocates of Evolutionary Biology, Intelligent Design, and Creationism.
This presentation closely (and humorously) examines the relationships between Creationism, Intelligent Design, and Evolution in America by giving a pictorial tour of the Creation Museum in Petersburg, Kentucky. There will also be artifacts from the museum for your perusal.
Biography:
Dr. John Troyer is the Death and Dying Practices Associate and RCUK Fellow at the Centre for Death and Society at the University of Bath. He received his doctorate from the University of Minnesota in Comparative Studies in Discourse and Society in May 2006. From 2007-2008 he was a Visiting Assistant Professor in the Department of Comparative Studies at The Ohio State University teaching the cultural studies of science and technology. Within the field of Death Studies, he analyzes the global history of science and technology and its effects on the dead body. He is a co-founder of the Death Reference Desk website and his first book, Technologies of the Human Corpse, will appear in late 2010.DIRECTIONS TO OBSERVATORY: ***PLEASE USE NEVINS ST./PROTEUS GOWANUS ENTRANCE***
Observatory is located at 543 Union Street at Nevins St., in the Gowanus neighborhood of Brooklyn. The entrance is currently through Proteus Gowanus gallery, in the alley off Nevins St (see below for full details).
R or M train to Union Street in Brooklyn:
Walk two long blocks on Union (towards the Gowanus Canal) to Nevins Street. 543 Union Street is the large red brick building on right. Go right on Nevins and left down alley through large black gates. Proteus Gowanus is the second door on the left.
F or G train to Carroll Street:
Walk one block to Union. Turn right, walk two long blocks on Union towards the Gowanus Canal, cross the bridge, take left on Nevins, go down the alley to Proteus Gowanus, the second door on the left.
For more information, see observatoryroom.org
Minnesota Artists Exhibition Program
Death Ref’s own John Troyer and artist Roxanne Jackson in Dialogue
Minneapolis Institute of Arts
2400 Third Avenue South
Minneapolis, MN
Thursday, October 15, 2009 7pm (FREE)
I love my job. I will be giving a talk at the Minneapolis Institute of Arts on all dead creatures great and small. And preserved. It is a conversation with artist Roxanne Jackson about her newest solo exhibition at the MIA. Here is the official announcement:
On October 15, we are excited to announce that Dr. John Troyer, Death and Dying Practices Associate at the Centre for Death & Society, University of Bath, will be talking about Roxanne Jackson’s work in relation to taxidermy and technologies of preservation.
An ambitious new Minnesota Artists Exhibition Program (MAEP) solo exhibition by local artist Roxanne Jackson explores the complex nuances between animals and humans. The show, “We Believe in Some Thing,” on view through November 1 in the Minneapolis Institute of Arts’ two MAEP galleries. Jackson’s ceramic sculptures, wall installations, and video explore human and animal interaction but also critique the assumed polarized differences between humans and animals. She asks, among other questions, “Are we more alike than different?”
It is a free talk, open to the public and I promise highly entertaining. I know from dead animals.
I might even bring my own private taxidermy collection to the talk. I know. I really have a private taxidermy collection.
Free Public Talk: Death and Memorial Tattooing
When: Wednesday, July 29, 7:30pm – 9:30pm
Where: West Bank Social Center, 501 Cedar Avenue South, Minneapolis 55454 (above the Nomad World Pub)
Ok. So it’s a little weird to promote my own talk this way on the Death Reference Desk, but as many people know I am called to perform… to the DANCE….
For this talk, I will present some new research on Death and Memorial Tattooing. I am interested in how people choose to remember/memorialize a dead person and/or pet with a tattoo. I will be joined at this talk by Awen Briem, Minneapolis tattoo artist extraordinaire, and the tattooist who has inked six of my seven tattoos. Since 1994, and through several tattooing sessions, we have spent A LOT of time discussing memorial tattoos. You have to talk about something while the needle works…
In late June, I presented some of this research at the Envisaging Death: Visual Culture and Dying symposium at the University of Birmingham, England. My talk was entitled A Labor of Death and a Labor Against Death: Memorial Tattoos in Late Modernity — I can promise that this talk on Wednesday night at the West Bank Social Center will be a lot of fun. Awen and I both want the audience involved in our discussion of Memorial Tattoos.
Feel free to e-mail me with any questions: j.troyer@bath.ac.uk
And check out Awen’s amazing Tattooing Blog.
Yours in Death and Tattooing….
— John Troyer
Our own esteemed professor of death, John Troyer, expounds on what else, the invention of the modern human corpse, at a lecture near you, if near you happens to be New York.
“Bodies Embalmed by Us NEVER TURN BLACK!”: A Brief History of the Hyperstimulated Human Corpse
Date: Thursday, July 2, 2009
Time: 7:30 PM
Admission: Free
@ the Observatory, No. 543 Union Street, Brooklyn, New York
