notes.husk.org/likes images.

Top, Dan Graham, Video Projection Outside Home, 1978. Via. See also, Video Projection Outside Home, 1978-1989, Architectural model, painted wood and plastic. Bottom, screen capture from .

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A surge of electrical activity in the brain could be responsible for the vivid experiences described by near-death survivors, scientists report. A study carried out on dying rats found high levels of brainwaves at the point of the animals’ demise. US researchers said that in humans this could give rise to a heightened state of consciousness.

The lead author of the study, Dr Jimo Borjigin, of the University of Michigan, said: “A lot of people thought that the brain after clinical death was inactive or hypoactive, with less activity than the waking state, and we show that is definitely not the case.

"If anything, it is much more active during the dying process than even the waking state.”

Rebecca Morelle, from Near-death experiences are ‘electrical surge in dying brain’, for BBC, August 13, 2013. Via.

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Fast forward to Wednesday 28th December, 2011, and the outside world is given a rare, brief peer into Pyongang, North Korea’s capital city. Why: it is the state funeral of Kim Jong-il. As snowy as Dr Zhivago and Dubai’s indoor ski-slope all combined, we see the funeral cortege comprised of American stretch limos (circa The Godfather), an immense billboard of the deceased Dear Leader, rendered in Social Realist Smiling style, schlepped slowly on a car-roof (viral movie poster). The corpse – which has been lying in a glass casket redolent of Lenin’s, which itself is a copy of Snow White’s – is ceremonially hauled through the city atop a padded, floral wig. There are hoards of soldiers too, frozen still not by the foreboding cold, but by unfaltering duty. Or, they’re CGI-clones, courtesy of Industrial Light & Magic.

Shumon Basar, from Dear Leader and His Nation of 24.45 Million Extras, December 29, 2011.