e-flux Journal issue #137

06/23

1.

Ilya Gordon wakes up in his apartment. The time is: Future.

But the apartment looks familiar—a typical middle class
New York apartment. He drinks his coffee, goes to a
parking lot, enters his car, and drives to his workplace. He
presents his documents to the guards at the gates, then
drives through the gates. He drives past buildings of
different types. Some buildings look like apartment
buildings and others are obviously office buildings. Ilya
parks his car, enters one of the office buildings, and heads
to his personal office.

Ilya works as a senior curator at the State Museum of

Immortality. At a certain point in time, people began to
consider themselves the most valuable art objects.
Humans did not want to accept their own mortality any
longer, when the products of their activity—texts,
artworks, monuments, designed objects etc.—were
guaranteed the privilege of secular immortality by the
museum system. Earlier people had been able to accept
bodily death because they believed that they had
immaterial souls that could survive their bodies. But
humanity had become non-religious, materialistic. People
didn’t believe in the immortality of the soul any more. Yet
the fear of death and the desire for immortality remained.
Boris Groys

Curating Immortality
It was only natural that hope for survival was directed
towards the museum system. After all, like art objects,
humans are only particular material bodies, which can be
kept intact and/or repaired and restored if necessary. The
State took over the function that had earlier been fulfilled
by God and Church. The State was not only responsible for
the well-being of the living population but also for its
immortality. This care was delegated to the curators. One
could say: utopia became realized. However, the new
order was neither utopian nor anti-utopian. The State’s
role in preserving immortality connected the population to
the State more than ever before. But State-produced
immortality is not the same as immortality bestowed
through divine grace: the production of immortality is
dependent on technology and social organization. And the
maintenance and development of technology need the
permanent investment of energy and work. People may
have been relieved from death—but they were not relieved
from work.

The museum system was totally restructured, and all the

museums and archives were turned into immortality
museums. After a person died, his or her body was
cryogenized and put into a special container. The
container was installed in a room designed to look as if
this person still lived in it. The room contained photos and
other documentation that were related to the dead
inhabitant of the room. The body was preserved, with the
goal of its eventual repair and resurrection. The
documentation and the general aesthetics of the room
were used to restore the personality and individual identity
of the deceased: his or her taste, way of life, and familiar
environment. In other words, the Museums of Immortality
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The Brain That Wouldn’t Die, directed by Joseph Green, 1962.
functioned as a democratized version of Egyptian
pyramids. Of course, being a technological operation, no
resurrection was a hundred percent reliable, and after a
while the resurrected could die again—but then he or she
could be cryogenized and resurrected again.
Ideally, every human being had a right to be cryogenized,
to be given a room, and to be resurrected in the shortest
period of time possible—so that he or she could be still
greeted by living relatives and friends. But technology
could never be perfect. While divine grace was infinite, the
economic resources of the State were finite. That meant:
the work of repair and resurrection depended on curatorial
decisions.
Someone had to decide who to resurrect first, what kind of
space an individual would get, how many people would be
involved in the design of the apartment and the
resurrection process itself. These were the questions that
the State Museum of Immortality’s curators—especially
the senior curator—had to decide. Clearly, curators were
constantly under pressure. There was always pressure
from the museum’s administration to make resurrection
cheaper. There was always political pressure to make
resurrection practices more representative of the make-up
of society in general. And there was also pressure from
relatives who wanted to resurrect their loved ones as soon
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as possible. Beyond that, technology needed permanent
repair and improvement, financial resources were always
insufficient, there was not enough space, there were not
enough specialists and not enough money to pay them,
etc. In other words, the curators of immortality were
subjected to the same pressures as the curators of
traditional art museums—only to a much greater degree.
They always operated under the suspicion of corruption,
of accommodating certain special interests, of
disregarding true equality and justice. And, as it turned
out, the suspicion of corruption was not totally unfounded.
The curators also had a subtler—but actually more
important—responsibility than the obvious one. The
personalities of resurrected individuals were heavily
dependent on the archives kept in the Museums of
Immortality and on the aesthetics of their rooms. And they
were also very much dependent on the way they were
reintroduced into the present state of their life: paradise
and hell are always the same, but earthly life changes all
the time. The past can operate in the context of the
present only if the past is interpreted in a way that makes it
compatible with the present. At a previous stage in history,
God was supposed to interpret and judge people’s pasts.
Now, it was the responsibility of the curators. Curators like
Ilya, who were supposed to decide what should be
included or excluded from the individual archives, had
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Museum diorama. Photo: tosh chiang / Flickr.
enormous responsibility—because they defined the
personality that each individual took on after resurrection.
The curators controlled the afterlife of humankind.
Ilya believed that the role of curators was the improvement
of humankind. Every individual should live his or her
afterlife better than his or her previous life. In other words,
Ilya wanted the moral progress of every individual, and
humanity in its totality, to correspond to the progress of
technology. To achieve this goal, he believed curators
should place the resurrected into an environment that
appealed to the best and not the worst aspects of his or
her nature. This would further the individual’s ability to
make ethically and aesthetically better choices and to
avoid bad choices. Ilya was known to say: “These clothes
and this furniture are too impersonal—they demonstrate
the typical fashions of the time in which this individual
lived, but not his particular personality. So his personality
will be weakened by this environment.” Or: “Why are there
only photos of this person taken by the others, but not her
own photos? They better reflect her personal attitudes.
Please, consult her Facebook page.” His assistant Justine
took notes. Justine was a beautiful blonde girl—but very
formal and reserved.
Today, after a routine tour of the museum spaces, Ilya
goes to his daily meeting with the director of the museum.
There are several curators in the room. The director uses
the opportunity to make an important announcement:
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I’ve gone through the recent reports, and I’ve seen that
your proposals bring us far beyond our financial
possibilities. After all, we are based on public-private
cooperation. We are financially responsible towards the
State and our investors. We have to produce revenue, not
only spend money.
Here one of the curators asks: But how can a museum
produce revenue?
Director: You forget that resurrected people will begin
working after a while—and they will be working potentially
into infinity. They will be not only be able to pay their debts
to the museum for maintenance and resurrection, but also
to bring a very substantial profit. But as we waiting for
more money to come in, let me introduce Mr. Voland and
his assistant, Juliette. Mr. Voland is a private sponsor who
is deeply interested in the problems of identity and
personality. He is ready to invest a substantial amount of
money to try to help us to create documentation and
environments to keep the personalities of the resurrected
as close as possible to their original or, rather, primary
personalities.
Voland is in his forties—good-looking, elegant. Juliette is a
very attractive brunette.
Voland: Yes, it is important that our resurrected work for
society. But of course, people are mostly lazy by
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Fragment of the collection at the IZO-Narkompros museum office, late 1919. Artworks by Malevich, Goncharova, Larionov, Kandinsky, Rodchenko, and
others. Photo: Encyclopedia of the Russian Avant-Garde.
nature—and immortality makes them even lazier. God
himself made a certain creative effort for only five days of
his life. So if we want to keep the essence of people’s
personality intact, we cannot push them to work too hard.
And by law, we are responsible precisely for keeping the
essence of their identity intact. That is why I plan to invest
a substantial amount of money to relieve the resurrected
from the necessity to work, and at the same to create the
optimal environments for keeping their personalities
undistorted.
Here Ilya intervenes: I think there is a misunderstanding
here. We do not only have to protect the personalities of
the resurrected, but also make these personalities more
ascetic and dedicated to working for the good of society.
What kind of environment should we create? Should we
order diamonds for Marilyn Monroe’s room, under the
pretext that loving diamonds is an integral part of her
personality?
Voland: I hope that you are a materialist and will not deny
that our personalities depend on the conditions of our
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existence. One cannot imagine the personality of Mark
Zuckerberg without Facebook, or Trump without Trump
Tower.
Ilya: And what does that mean? If we decide to resurrect
Hitler, should we also rebuild Auschwitz for him?
Voland: In fact, Hitler never went to Auschwitz. He spent
most of his time at a summerhouse or in a bunker. So it
would be a good idea to build a bunker for him—he could
practice painting there. But, in general, I believe that
human personalities are very different from each
other—and it is these differences that you curators have to
cherish, defend, and resurrect. Human history is full of
colorful, daring, creative personalities. It would be a crime
against human culture to resurrect everyone as average,
modest, good workers without imagination, without
passions and desires—even if these desires may be from
time to time excessive and destructive. Our highest duty is
to uphold human culture in all its diversity. My assistant
Juliette will contact you, Mr. Gordon, and I hope that our
collaboration will help realize these high goals. And here I
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have to say that I represent the DeRais Foundation. The
owner of the company, Gilles de Rais, died recently, and
we are very interested in his speedy resurrection. Indeed, I
can assure you that Mr. de Rais was dedicated to the work
of our company—so here our goals coincide.
Ilya: Yes, of course, I am happy to arrange a meeting with
Miss Juliette and discuss our further plans with her.
2.
They meet. Juliette is charming. She says that she truly
admires Ilya and his lofty ideas about resurrection as a
method to improve humankind. However, she asks herself
what “improvement” means. She believes that humans
should be happy. But to be happy one has to have the
ability to be seductive, admirable, desirable, and loved. We
love and admire people not only for their virtues but also
for their deviations from virtue—even for their sins. Some
people, like Ilya, might be morally perfect and desirable at
the same time—at that moment one could read admiration
for Ilya in her eyes – but many other people are more
complicated but no less desirable. Gilles de Rais is such a
person. Juliette says she would love to cooperate in
designing his apartment in a way that would suit his
extraordinary personality. Ilya is half-seduced,
fascinated—and says, yes, of course, he would be happy
to work together.
Now, something should be said about the DeRais
Foundation and its true origin and goals. The emergence
of the Museums of Immortality was quite a blow for more
traditional organizations, movements, and sects who
made the promise of immortality their main business. First
of all, different Christian churches, as well as other
religious institutions, were affected. It seemed that they
did not have a place alongside the new Museums of
Immortality. Indeed, humanity lost its faith in immaterial
spiritual matters. Thus, Christian priests lost their
communities, as did specialists in transcendental
meditation, theosophy, anthroposophy, and
metempsychosis. However, they found their new place
fast enough. The museums needed specialists in human
psychology in relationship with immortality, and traditional
psychology does not deal with this topic. And so the
priests took positions as advisers in the new Museums of
Immortality, which substituted for their old churches.
The same smooth transition could not be said about
other—dark, obscure, demonic—practices of making
people immortal or keeping them eternally young. The
reason is simple: these traditions were also materialistic,
and thus did not contradict the zeitgeist. The initiated, like
Gilles de Rais, attempted rejuvenation by bathing in the
blood of virgins, a vampiric tradition combined with the
cult of Holy Grail. For these old traditions, the Museums of
Immortality offered real competition. That is why
organizations like the DeRais Foundation tried to corrupt,
subvert, and even destroy the Museums of Immortality. At
the same time these old obscure, secret societies
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presented themselves as enlightened and humanistic,
because they spoke the language of materialism. One
might say that the two kinds of institution offered two
conflicting visions of humankind in the post-religious age.
The museums continued the great religious traditions by
secular means: they were collective and centralized
projects to achieve real, corporeal immortality through
technology based on science and art—and did so in a
reliable and controllable way. On the other hand, various
obscure materialist sects wanted to produce ecstatic
feelings in their adherents, or inner experiences of
immortality—and believed that these feelings, produced
mainly by drugs, were more important than the factual,
“external” immortality of the human bodies. They
considered such factual immortality as monotonous and
boring.
During the days following the meeting, Ilya starts to notice
unusual objects, not only in De Rais room but also in the
rooms of other deceased people. For example, he sees
copies of old German and Dutch paintings that show the
bodies of Christ and saints enduring torture, covered by
blood. At first, the sight gives Ilya an uneasy feeling, but
Juliette explains to him that the true Christian religion is a
religion of suffering and the selected images reflect the
spirit of this religion.
She says: Look how the faces of these martyrs are joyous,
happy.
Ilya: Because they are suffering for the right cause?
Juliette: Yes, partially. But primarily because they feel that
they are truly alive. We humans look for the intensity of
life—we want not only live but also to experience life. Look
at the rooms of your museum. The deceased are
cryogenized, they remain in their containers—but what
happens when they leave these containers? Their rooms
are also lifeless, neutral, dead. Their resurrection is just a
transfer from a small container to a bigger container. That
is not true life.
Ilya looks at Juliette—and suddenly understands: yes, he
has never been truly alive. If she tortured him, he would
feel alive for the first time in his life. Maybe even if she
would simply kiss him or undress for him. He wants to tell
her this, but remembers the rules that forbid sexual
harassment at the workplace. So he remains silent. Their
collaboration progresses further. The number of strange
objects grows. The beds are turned into alcoves. The
rooms become darker. The books disappear from the
shelves. They are substituted by ancient Indian fetishes
and African masks. One day, in Gilles de Rais’ room, Ilya
finds a big knife with traces of blood on it. He asks Juliette
what it means. Juliette says that Gilles uses this knife for
his work. Ilya does not ask: what kind of work? He does not
want any conflict with Juliette. He is frightened by the
possibility of losing her, of not seeing her, of not enjoying
her presence.
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The Trial of Gilles de Rais, painting manuscript, National Library of France, 17th century. License: Public Domain.

Fewer and fewer resurrections are taking place. It is said begins to serve as a location for the corporate festivities of
that some of them have failed. The bodies have not been the DeRais Foundation. At the beginning, the festivities
shown to relatives—but this is mostly because they were have a modest character. But then they become more and
the bodies of people without relatives. The museum more ecstatic and orgiastic—drugs and sex and a lot of

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blood. Voland and Juliette play the role of organizers. The
orgies become increasingly cannibalistic. The cryogenized
bodies are defrosted and eaten. This is why the bodies
have been disappearing. The director of the museum is
seen participating in the orgies—together with some other
collaborators of the museum.
Detail from Untitled, a fresco by František Gajdoš, 1960. License: CC BY-SA 4.0.
Justine is increasingly worried by these developments.
She is an ideal assistant: intelligent, well educated, and
truly dedicated. She is trained not to be surprised by
anything. But she is also trained to be well-informed. So
she decides to find out what the DeRais Foundation is
really about. She searches the museum files to find out
what has happened to the non-resurrected bodies. She
searches the Internet, calls friends and acquaintances.
She gets even more worried. On the surface, the DeRais
Foundation buys and sells antiquities—especially African
masks and Indian and Polynesian fetishes. But it also
offers courses on how to reenact the rituals in which these
objects were initially used. However, the content and goal
of the courses remains somehow obscure, the rituals not
fully described. Justine decides to schedule an
appointment with Voland to find out the intention behind
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the courses and rituals.
3.
They meet in Voland’s office. The office is rather
traditionally styled. There are images of the crucifixion,
some fetishes, and masks. Voland greets Justine, offers
her a seat, and starts a short lecture:
We at the DeRais Foundation understand ourselves as
community organizers. Our goal is to build
communities—to overcome the alienation and isolation of
individuals in our society. As you know, Christians
achieved this goal by offering believers Communion:
Christ’s flesh and blood. In this way, the community was
built, not only on the spiritual but also the corporeal level.
Of course, this privileging of Christ is historically obsolete.
In our time every body can serve as Communion. So our
rituals are based on cannibalistic feasts that produce
communities. Unfortunately, it is very difficult to find
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people who are ready to offer their flesh and blood for cooked.
these feasts. We realized your museum offers a good
solution. As you well know, the technology is never Voland: Oh, no—they have these new
perfect. So some cryogenized bodies could be—and are refrigerators—fire-resistant ones.
from time to time—unfit for resurrection. We suggest to
defreeze these bodies and then eat them. In this way, Juliette: What a pity.
cryogenized people get an alternative perspective on
immortality—and, in fact, a much better one. Their Voland: Well, I don’t like them cooked anyway. I prefer
existence is no longer sad and solitary; they become parts them as carpaccio.
of vibrant communities. I see here the essence of the
private-public partnership: the opportunity to overcome Juliette: Me too.
the cold, administrative approach through active, warm
community practice. They drive away.

Justine is surprised. She needs some time to think through
Voland’s ideas. She is trained to check everything through
first-hand observation. So she asks Voland to show her
how the community building functions. Voland invites her
to a ritual. He asks Juliette to invite Ilya, and all of them
come. Very soon, Ilya is carried away by communal
ecstasy. But Justine remains calm in the midst of the
collective frenzy and tries to make sense of what she sees.
She discusses the action with Voland—and he argues that
what she sees are only true human desires becoming
realized. The abolition of death makes no sense to people
who are still living under the necessity of work. Original sin
is still not overcome, the old curse remains operative, the
paradise is not reached. But Justine does not accept
Voland’s ideology. And she realizes that she has to save
herself and the whole museum from Voland’s control.
Ilya and Justine contemplate the fire.
Ilya: All this is our fault. We were not vigilant enough. I was
not vigilant enough—I let imaginary immortality distract
me from real immortality. I did not understand that
immortality is a moral duty that compels us to work for the
future well-being of all humankind—and not an individual
experience that is temporary and leaves emptiness behind
when it is over.
Justine: But we will build the Museum of Immortality anew.
And we will make the solemn promise that all our
resurrected will live their afterlives as better people.

The next day, Justine speaks to Ilya. Ilya is embarrassed

when he realizes that she had been watching him the X
night before, but then agrees that action should be taken.
They must prove that the museum files have been falsified
and cryogeny misused. They search in the archives and Boris Groys is a philosopher, essayist, art critic, media
find that the whole museum administration is corrupt. It theorist, and an internationally renowned expert on
has been taking money from the relatives who wanted Soviet-era art and literature, especially the Russian
their loved ones be resurrected and, yes, DeRais has also avant-garde.
taken money for proclaiming some cryogenized people
unfit for resurrection. Ilya and Justine go to the director
and confront him with their findings.

But Voland and the director are already prepared for their
visit. The museum’s guards and the members of the
DeRais Foundation are also there. Ilya and Justine are
captured.

The story of their ensuing escape is a complicated

one—and cannot be told here in all its details. But the
most important point: during the escape, the electronic
security system is switched off, there is a storm outside,
lightning hits one of the buildings, and soon all the
museum’s buildings catch fire. The director perishes. The
fire squads come—and Voland gives up his attempt to
catch Justine.

Voland is in a car—together with Juliette.

She says: It is nice to see these cryogenized people get

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Marquis de Sade, Justine, first edition, 1791. Frontispiece by Philippe Chéry. License: Public Domain.

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