While Nguyen Hatsushiba’s film re presents the slow violence of American weapons and industry wrought upon the poor, forgotten bodies of Vietnamese refugees abroad and in Vietnam, Jae Rhim Lee brings attention to the over 200 toxic chemicals in American bodies including tobacco residues, dry cleaning chemicals, pesticides, flame retardants, heavy metals, preservatives, and more. Bisphenol A , a synthetic estrogen and plastic hardener which causes reproductive and neurological damage, alone is found in 93% of people over the age of 6.Lee’s Infinity Burial Project seeks to end the cycle of toxicity by purifying these pollutants from the body in death while directly trying to dismantle the traditional funerary practice of embalming. Each artist’s work offers some form of purification from the necropolitcal ordering of life on earth. Illuminating the politics of imperceptibility, both artists’ works bring a heightened awareness to the political intersections of waste, “nature,” and death. Jae Rhim Lee’s Infinity Burial Project works against the culture of death denial by offering a re imagination of death that focuses on a re connection to the earth’s nutrient systems. The “infinite” aspect of her work lies in the conceptual distribution of animacy from living mushrooms to the dead body in a way that frames decay in a positive light. Environmental reciprocity is not only achieved through bio physical means since, as Lee explains, “In a time of mounting threat and destruction, the self also needs an offensive strategy,indoor vertical farming one that heals the core of the psyche.”By revealing the cyclical nature of ecological processes of decay within decompiculture, she allows the viewers to face the taboo of death and corpses in a psychologically comforting way.

While green burials options are increasingly popular and offer a wide range of options, her project offers a uniquely natural way to cleanse the body of toxins after death. The Infinity Burial Project features the Infinity Burial Suit that can allegedly cleanse one’s dead body and deliver nutrients to plant roots . Costing $1,500 dollars, the suit is marketed as the “green” alternative to both cremation and embalming, which contaminates living human bodies and the environment. Cremation requires energy and releases the toxins within our bodies into the air while embalming requires the harmful carcinogen called formaldehyde. In contrast, the suit is made with organic, biodegradable cloth that is infused with mushroom mycelia and other organisms in a dendritic pattern that activates upon contact with dead human tissue . Jae Rhim Lee’s Infinity Burial Project seeks to revolutionize funerary practices in ways that protect the living and sustainably connects the body to soil. In 2007, Lee’s wish to remedy cultural death denial and unsustainable funerary practices began at an artist residency in Northern California. During her time there, she visited a permaculture school, farm, and green cemetery located nearby. At the cross section of the remedial abilities of mushrooms, green burials, and food production, she saw the potential for cultural and ecological reimaginations of death through fungi.Upon this revelation, she began researching the possibility of breeding an “Infinity Mushroom” that would be optimal for remediating the toxins in bodies and soil. Lee took inspiration from the entomologist Timothy Miles who coined the term “decompiculture,” the cultivation of organisms that facilitate decomposition, in his research that aimed at breaking down petrochemicals with mushrooms.However, she soon realized that mushrooms are nearly impossible to hybridize and that existing strains are already effective at cleansing toxins. Following her viral presentation at the TED Global conference in 2011, she formed the Decompiculture Society in order to foster public knowledge about post mortem options and cultural ideologies surrounding death through online platforms and workshops .In 2014, Lee became a lecturer and fellow at the Hasso Plattner Institute of Design at Stanford to further her research for the Infinity Burial Project. Following this period, she founded the company Coeio in 2015 and started producing her Infinity Burial Suit to sell.

The name of the company is derived from the Latin word, coeo, which means “to come together.” The name reflects the Infinity Burial Project’s goal of connecting humans and the earth through death. Proving their commitment to this idea, Coeio promises that with every purchase of an Infinity Burial Suit, they will plant 2 trees, compost any manufacturing scraps, and primarily use renewable energy sources. Clearly, this project truly lies at a future oriented intersection of business, biotechnology, ecology, design, and art.Built into the suit is a biomix consisting of mushroom mycelium and other microorganisms that aid in the body’s decomposition in order to neutralize toxins in the body and speedily transfer nutrients to the soil. Mycelium consist of threadlike hyphae, or branches, that facilitate the rhizomatic reproduction of fungi. “A rhizome has no beginning or end; it is always in the middle, between things, interbeing, intermezzo,”and the mycorrhizal fungi that Lee utilizes colonize the root systems of a host plant and provide heightened water and nutrient absorption while the plant provides the fungus with carbohydrates formed from photosynthesis.Although oxygen, soil depth, and temperature variables impact mycelium development, Lee claims that the 4 foot depth used by green cemeteries does not hinder growth.Mycoremediation is the process by which mushrooms remove toxins from the soil or body. Lee uses oyster and shiitake mushrooms for their aptness at consuming various sources of nutrients. These mushrooms neutralize organic toxins by breaking down molecular bonds and bind to heavy metal particles through a process called chelation.While the possibility of eating mushrooms laden with heavy metals seems to be a likely risk, no evidence of fungal surface growth has been shown. Quoting Roszak’s idea of a “narcissistic revolution”, Lee agrees that “a process of self examination, body self integration, reconciliation with death, and a uniting of body with nature” is needed in order to replace the attention demanding, energy economy.Pulling from Freud’s essay “On Narcissism”, Lee wants to meld primary narcissism with ecological stewardship in order to counteract the secondary narcissism which disengages from the world and only focuses on a “false self” –– similar to melancholic processes of mourning.

Secondary narcissism is fed by “mass consumption, warfare, economic decline, environmental degradation,best indoor vertical garden system and the dependence on technologies, [that] pose a threat to the self,” ultimately resulting in psychological and cultural annihilation. Drawing from Foucault’s concept of the “technologies of self,” Lee believes the psychic inwards turn to practice self care purifies oneself from the destructive consumptive practices that degrade the environment, waste human energy, and sideline deep personal needs.In Jae Rhim Lee’s words, “If the body is the first boundary of the self… Death is the eventual distribution of the body into the earth via –– the ultimate formlessness, weightlessness of the body.”Lee recognizes that the dualistic relationship between body and self is connected but fundamentally at odds with each other. As the body is always asserting its mortality, the self is always trying to transform itself into a symbol of transcendence. Concepts of self hood and existential threat occupy a large part of human psychology and constantly affects the makeup of society. Expanding on Erst Becker’s research on how societies manage fears of death, Terror Management Theory looks into the ways in which societal norms are upheld, such as hygiene, in order to buffer death anxiety. Although Lee’s project seems other worldly, her design practice is grounded in feeding emotional and ecological needs. Her Infinity Burial Suit challenges the boundaries between self, “nature,” and other in order to have a closer relationship between self and planet. Lee, like Roszak, advocates for a moderate form of narcissism as a way to reconnect with one’s ecological unconscious and support an environmental stewardship that is desirable and not based on fear or guilt. Like ecopsychology, Lee questions the destructive traits of capitalism and seeks to grow the ecological unconscious which lies in the center of the mind. Capitalism’s “economy of spectacles and desires… [make it] harder to imagine where life should lead and what, besides commodities, should be in it.”By fostering an ecological ego through narcissistic self seeking, one can eliminate the “false self” and focus on the needs of the planet as their own.In line with moderate narcissism, her burial suit offers a “unique option [that is] as unique as [people’s] lives.”By appropriating the sense of self boosted by consumption of commodities, her product offers a desirable example of how one can declare self hood even in death.

Also, from a marketing point of view, the transcendence reached for by the self is still comforted by the sense of “infinity” conferred in the product’s name. By imbuing the seemingly static state of death with the rhizomatic nature of ecosystems, she provides a crucial conceptual linkage between death as a part of sym poiesis: the inter species networks of decay and renewal, rather than auto poiesis, solely sustaining oneself . “Chthulucene” is Haraway’s term derived from the Greek word chthon, meaning “earth”, which focuses on sym poiesis “making with.”She proposes that humans are composts comprised of an infinite variety all different “kinds of assemblages” and that “Right now, the earth is full of refugees, human and not, without refuge,” and “To live and die well as mortal critters in the Chthulucene is to join forces to reconstitute refuges, to make possible partial and robust biological cultural political technological recuperation and recomposition, which must include mourning irreversible losses.”By aiding the body in becoming “clean” compost for the Earth, Lee expresses her utopic vision of death with her Infinity Burial Project.Man’s emissions of carbon dioxide and nitrogen are impacting large portions of the Earth’s forests.In this era of greenhouse gas induced climate change understanding the trajectory of global trends in forest productivity and soil carbon storage is more important than ever. Ectomycorrhizal fungi play a major role in many of the processes that govern how forests will respond to global change. My PhD thesis attempted to shed light on one of the most important questions facing forest ecology today: As nutrient demands by forest trees is altered by human induced global change, how will the functioning of ectomycorrhizal communities respond? In the proceeding introductory pages I will give some background information about ectomycorrhizal fungi and the effects of anthropogenic nitrogen deposition and elevated atmospheric CO2 levels on forests and ectomycorrhizal communities. I will then discuss how my PhD research has contributed to a greater understanding of how forests will be affected by the next century of human alteration of the global carbon and nitrogen cycles. Ectomycorrhizal fungi are important to forest health. The majority of land plants associate with some fungi in mycorrhizal symbiosis . A mycorrhiza is a symbiotic union between a fungus and a plant root, and, while the role of this symbiosis is complex and variable, nearly all mycorrhizae share a common trait of being a mutualistic exchange of plant derived carbon for fungus supplied nutrients. Ectomycorrhizae are one of a number of mycorrhizal types. Ectomycorrhizae are structurally distinct in that the fungus forms a sheath around the root tips, and sends hyphae into the root, but does not penetrate the plant cell walls. This type of mycorrhiza, ectomycorrhizae, associates with a relatively small portion of all plant species, perhaps only about 3%, but this 3% represents the majority of trees of the temperate and boreal forests , so, in terms of land area, the majority of the earth’s forests are dependant on ectomycorrhizal fungi . Ectomycorrhizae have been shown to improve their host plant’s resistance to drought , pathogens , and phytotoxic concentrations of heavy metals , but it is their ability to provide nutrients to their hosts that is generally considered their most growth promoting effect. This enhanced nutrient uptake is a result of ectomycorrhizal fungi’s ability to greatly increase the amount of soil the plants can be in contact with through their extensive mycelial networks as well as their ability to solubilize and take up nutrients from pools not available to plant roots. The majority of research on growth promotion by ectomycorrhizal fungi has focused on their ability to provide nitrogen to their host plants.