Friday, February 15, 2013

"This is my coffee table, his name is Dave"

Hi there, my name is Dave.  I'd like to be your coffee table.  Or lamp.  Or, if you're an artist, your signature project.

The problem might be, is it legal to license the use of a dead human who is properly preserved for artistic reasons?

I've realized I probably won't mind if I don't have my body anymore after I die.  I don't plan on doing so anytime soon, but when it does happen I don't want to just get thrown away, recycled, or just put in a compost pile.  So, what is there to do with a Dave?

Well, maybe I could be a coffee table, or otherwise a piece of art.    I'd bet with some properly bolted in metal plates I could be part of an awesome bookshelf or workbench.  Since I was a...  Maybe a teenager?  It's been a while, but anyway, I've thought it would be funny to be encased in plastic either on my back like a stranded turtle, or on my hands and knees with a table top attached so I could become a coffee table.

Maybe that's too simple, and I could be made into a lamp that could change my appearance with the seasons simply by dressing up my preserved corpse?  It's not like I'll need it by then.

For the right price, maybe I could become a trophy.  It really won't matter if it's after I'm dead, which is pretty much the only way I'll accept any negotiations for the trade in of my body.

But, if anyone wanted to buy a license to use my image, including after death, as well as the rights to the source material I'd be happy to consider negotiating a license to use my leftovers when I'm gone in the most entertaining and profitable way possible.

In the long, long run, like, once I've been dead for fifty years, for it to end up in a museum, which is why I would prefer it to just be a license to use my body until I become a more long term art project for the public to appreciate.

If anyone has ideas about how they'd like to license a Dave please feel free to contact me; just have creative ideas for the first free range Dave as well as a lawyer with some idea for how I can rent my not-quite rotting remains to you when I'm gone.  (Which, if you really are serious, you'll need a serious long-term plan.  I'm only in my 30's now, so it might be a while before your vision can be achieved.  I have to be kind of done with this body first.)