Between Play and Decay: Towards the Creation of a Living Cemetery

This video installation imagines alternative futures for cemeteries by bringing together the seemingly incompatible forces of play and decay. Traditionally understood as static, sacred and culturally untouchable, abandoned burial grounds are reimagined as dynamic urban landscapes shaped by time, memory and ecological processes.

Decay, often framed as neglect or failure, emerges here as a productive force through weathering, overgrowth and material transformation. Play, commonly associated with joy and spontaneity, appears not as programmed activity but as spatial ambiguity, enabling improvisation, civic encounter and new forms of presence within landscapes of mourning.

Their deliberate tension reveals possibilities for spatial transformation, public engagement and ecological renewal.