ascension by leonardo zuccaro marchi from italy

ASCENSION

Since Napoleon`s “Décret Impérial sur les Sépultures” (1804), the death left our daily life: the graves were moved far away from the city center, into cemeteries outside the urban walls.
Few months later Napoleon`s edict , Ugo Foscolo vehemently criticized in “Dei Sepolcri” (1806) this abandonment of the civic utility of the tombs. Indeed tombs could inspire those living today , in particular poets, and they could help to keep the memory of the soul and spirit of the beloved dead persons.

Since these symbols are not anymore direct parts of our life, and tombs have lost such civic purpose as described by Foscolo, the aim of the project is to transform all nature as part of a symbolical memory of the soul of the dead person.

The ancestral and archetypical burial in soil is then substituted by a transcendental and symbolical presence of the dead person with an always present energy. The ritual of the visit of the tomb is replaced with an always participating symbolical presence of the dead person.

The “Ascension”, which refers to the Ascension of the resurrected body of Jesus to Heaven, becomes a transcendent way to immortalize the memory of the decedents, being part of a total universal energy.

Indeed the ashes of the dead bodies are put in specif urns and scattered to the wind in the sky ( 30-40 km height). Thus the sky and the stars become always present and visible elements and symbols of our beloved decedents.

Technical description:

The ashes are located inside an urn. A stratospheric balloon lifts up the urn up to 30-40 km above the ground. At this point the ashes are automatically spilled out of the urn, spread over the stratosphere by the wind. The balloon then deflates and it is later re-used for another ascension.
The stratospheric balloons are usually used in science for satellites in the stratosphere. The structure of the balloon consists of nothing more than some gas inside a plastic bag and it relies exclusively on natural forces: buoyancy for lift, winds for direction and gravity to descend.
The Ascension could start in a isolated place (such as a desert as shown in the picture), as a private-personal ceremony or a public one.