Images of death are among our contemporary favourites, and are as present as in a medieval plague drama, baroque apocalypses, Cold War bomb shelters or a 1980s’ AIDS scenario. Death has everything: a drama; a fate; a story; and a message of fear, grief, loss and unending loneliness. Today, death seems more modern than ever. Film, video art and exhibitions showcase death with constantly stretched boundaries. The neurotically productive crime novel genre seems to alleviate death anxiety by fictionalising death. At the same time, the pathologist has been assigned – something that delves into death's most factual details – a contradictory hero’s role. In the private sphere and the nursery, symbols of death form part of the decoration and games. Toys, wallpaper and t-shirts with skull motifs are bestsellers and Halloween skulls and bones are eaten like sweets in a hilariously pseudo-cannibalistic rite. The boundary between the living and the...