An Ode: Adrian Piper’s “What Will Become of Me”
1985, American conceptual artist Adrian Piper begins her project, “What Will Become Of Me”, only to be completed upon her death, when her cremated remains will join honey jars filled with hair and fingernails. Flanking the project are 1.) an account of her own experiences beginning this documentation and 2.) a notarized statement donating her work to the Museum of Modern Art, New York upon its eventual conclusion.
This is the most radical thing I can think of. A black woman, she determines her death space. This work says to an institution of historical exclusion:
You may have my body on my own terms/these terms only/you may have my body on these terms alone/you may have my body only when notarized/when officiated/when I have signed it away/when my living self says so/you may have my body only someday/only once I’m gone.
This work says loudly that it disrupts the space of white masculine reverence. It shouts:
Let me leave my body behind/let my ash be ritualized/be admired/be forever. Let my body be art/on my own terms/on my own terms. Then, only then, may you have my body.
A Will (My Own)
1) Preliminary Declarations: I consent to my decay.
I ask that the bones from my right leg are deposited bit by bit in the hallways of every school I have ever haunted.
My left leg goes to the Boboli Gardens, hidden in the trees, sprinkle it with white wine before you walk away.
My right arm I throw to the bars, the dance clubs. Spread its joints on the floor only on a night when it is sweaty and pulsing, when there are leather pants and mistakes, cocaine on the bathroom tile, the air thick with angel dust, with pulsing rhythm.
Its mirror image, the left, will be put on park benches of silent contemplation.
Allow my body to be divided, to multiply, to spread as far as my pieces can reach.
2) Distribution of the Estate: I consent to my decay.
My head can go to science; pry my skull open and see it filled with bats, with sunflowers, overflowing with thoughts left unsaid, let them spill over baffled medical students who did not sign up for this and who will nonetheless cure cancer one day.
Liver, spleen, and kidneys, I ask that you feed them to street dogs; allow them to feast forever on my ever re-forming organs, heavy with protein, thick with meat.
My fingers can go to ten friends: fight amongst yourself for who gets the thumbs.
And my toes, well, who cares where they go?
3) Trust Termination: I consent to my decay.
Let artists have my spine, they can draw both in an arch and straightness. They’ll admire each vertebrates and then crumble it in their fingers when they work with charcoal; smear my discs across the page.
Stretch my skin across Palestine and,
Use my veins to tie neat ribbons around gifts passed on to those I love(d).
And give my ears to a child to hear ghosts and demons, interpret tarot, to listen to the moon howl late at night through her bedroom window. Hand my ears to this child and she will know what to do with them.
Place my eyes in a glass jar, and set it upon a table in front of the world, I’ll view it all through blinking lenses.
4) Power of Trustees: I consent to my decay.
My reproductive organs give to a woman who wants them, no, to any person at all who wishes to have children and cannot. Place my womb inside him gently.
My hair will go to a drag queen, who can take it on and off as she pleases, I ask only that she dance to Patti Smith just one time.
5) No Contest Provision: I consent to my decay.
I give my pores’ oil to a dry lamp, no preference where it lives.
And all my blood to those with AIDs who need transfusions, every last drop I beg you to drain. If someone without HIV comes and asks for it, please softly tell them This Blood Was Not Destined For You.
6) Severability: I consent to my decay
Whatever’s left, please bury,
In an unmarked hole.
Do not look back, do not leave flowers,
My body has lived enough already;
7) A Last Will and Testament: I consent to my decay.