Final Form: When Its Not Your Time To Die

2024 MP4, 09’ 05“, stereo


The video essay examines the perception of cryonics as a cross-cultural phenomenon and as a publicly presented vision of the future. It draws from the YouTube channels of prominent cryonics companies such as KryoRus (RU), Alcor (US), Biostasis (CH) and atmospheric footage from documentaries.

A profound disjunction between the virtual and real world experiences of cryopreservation is juxtaposed, deconstructing the cryonic imaginary. The visually seductive perfection of the rendered environment (and body), with its flawless textures and idealised representations, stands in stark contrast to the visceral reality of preserving a human body. This contrast highlights the corporeal nature of the practice, emphasising the physicality, vulnerability and undeniable presence of the individual being cryopreserved, which is often erased by virtual representation.

The opening scene in a YouTube video clip uploaded by KryoRus, entitled ‘When It’s Not Your Time to Die’, symbolically portrays the act of flying as a metaphor for life. When the pilot loses a wing in mid-air, a post-production blur effect is used to convey the pilot’s skill in manoeuvring the aircraft with only one wing and ultimately landing unharmed. This landing serves as a metaphor for the overarching goal of the cryonics community: to transcend the boundaries of life and death, to exist in its final form - a body for infinity - through the exploration and invention of new technologies.

As cryopreservation emerges as a viable option for privileged individuals of considerable wealth and remains a fictional narrative for the common person, the practice is illuminated as a technosomatic symptom of class.

Unlike “natural” cold (ice), which, particularly in the case of cryonics, is positioned in proximity to cellular death, “artificial” cold (cryo) becomes animated through metaphors of superheroes and time travel frontiers. In this way, artificial cold comes to represent scientific progress and the enhancement of life itself. In this multimodal domain, “artificial” cold attaches itself to the frontier, including the promise, in the case of cryonics, of an “enhanced” second life. Meanwhile, in the cryonics discourses, the brain becomes the most prized object in which information and experiences are seen to be stored, while in the case of cryotherapy, it translates metaphorically into the figure of the youthful, muscular, slender, fit, and fresh gendered body.
 

The Alcor Life Extension Foundation has frozen as many people in the last 10 years as it did in the 35 years before that.2 In that same period, membership numbers at the Cryonics Institute have grown a lot faster than ‘patient’ numbers.3 Throughout the 20th century, these two institutions and another US cryonics facility, all founded with the advent of the movement in the 1970s, were the exclusive suppliers of cryonics services. In recent years, the movement has spread across the world and more facilities have commenced operations or are planning to. In 2005 the first facility outside the USA, KrioRus, was opened in Russia4 and another one, which froze its first patient in 2014, was incorporated in the USA5; in 2012, Southern Cryonics was incorporated (then called Stasis Systems Australia), and currently promises to start offering cryonics services in Australia and New Zealand by 20206; finally, a project called CryoGen, with the intention of opening a cryostorage facility in Switzerland, was recently launched by KrioRus and a Singaporean neurobiotech foundation.7

Fit, Fresh and Frozen (2021);
The Rhetorics of Artificial Cold Kroløkke, Charlotte
p. 22

1 The term cryonics comes from the Greek κρύος (kryos) meaning cold. Cryonics is based on a technology called cryopreservation which denotes preservation of biological material at cryogenic temperature, i.e. at -196°C, which is the temperature of liquid nitrogen.

2 See http://alcor.org/AboutAlcor/membershipstats.html (accessed March 25, 2019)

3 See http://www.cryonics.org/ci-landing/member-statistics/ (accessed March 25, 2019)

4 http://kriorus.ru/en/about-us (accessed March 25, 2019)

5 http://oregoncryo.com/aboutOC.html (accessed March 25, 2019)

6 https://southerncryonics.com/ (accessed March 25, 2019)