The funeral bike

Idea: 2006

Start of construction: 2017

Completion: 2020

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The aim of the project is to bring the mostly and strongly repressed and hidden topic of "dying, death and finiteness" back into our everyday social life. And road traffic is a central place for interaction and communication.

The funeral wheel is specially designed and built for its intended purpose according to the legal regulations of the STVZO and the Lower Saxony Funeral Ordinance and therefore much more than a work of art.

It embodies a clear contrast to the life and behavior practice of the "more-faster-more-greater-louder-higher..." of today's everyday life, namely:

• Insight into the self-evidentness of finiteness
• pause
• Refreshments
• deceleration
• The counter-draft to the materialistic worldview of the Western world
• The confrontation with the moment, the NOW as an interface between the past and the future
• The ancient practice of giving the last convoy to the deceased, bringing/carrying a loved one to the grave together.

Since, in addition to my work as a freelance artist, art technician, set designer and journeyman in the two-wheel mechanic trade, I also have all the knowledge in welding, construction and the like, it was all too logical to use the "bicycle" as a visual means to bring the topic of ‘dying and transience’ into our everyday social life.

I deliberately designed the wheel with the coffin on the loading area in front of the steering. It thus pays tribute to the respect and respect for the deceased fellow human being and his life to a much greater extent than to hide the coffin of a corpse in the trunk of an invisible motor vehicle.

Therefore, I have also reduced all technical-constructive, creative and pictorial means to a minimum. At the center of the action should - and must - be the coffin. The vehicle is built extremely filigree and "light", "light". And also not black but dark blue.

Would you like to use the funeral bike with me or another person as a driver? Then you can simply contact me via the contact form on the homepage.

Price on request.

Contact us at:

Michael Olsen
This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.

or 0177-4334616

Photos: Jörg Hemmen, Oldenburg, copyright!

To the report of the Nordwest-Zeitung

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