Consultation typically involves a one-on-one meeting between a consultant and a client. The consultant is tasked with providing to the client information, feedback, or advice that might help the client to realize some aspect of their desires.

The corpse, according to the ever-reliable Merriam-Webster Dictionary, was once defined as “a human or animal body whether living or dead.” It is that thing we each are becoming.

In Consultation with the Corpse, the consultant (Benjamin Ross Nicholson) engages the client in a 60-minute exploration of death and dying, custom-tailored to each client's encounters with decay and what it might mean to die well.

Consultation with the Corpse, a service offered by Benjamin Ross Nicholson, is free of charge and may take place at the location of the client’s choosing, provided that the location is secluded, can accommodate the bodies of at least two people, and can be made dark.

It unfurls over roughly 60 minutes in three phases:

-Induction, by which the consultant and the client ease into their co-presence

-Micro-services, during which the client selects from a menu of activities concerning their death and dying, collaboratively enacted with the consultant

-Debrief, at which point the consultant and client commiserate and depart

Benjamin Ross Nicholson (PhD pending) is a former business professional and prospective corpse. He studies the relationship between contemporary capitalism (neoliberalism) and processes of death and dying, sharing his research through performance.

For Benjamin, Consultation with the Corpse provides an opportunity not only to present his notions of necrontology, but also to be affected and effected by his encounters with clients, with whom he might enter into a circulation of care.

He hopes that, for the client, the consultation will assist the client in recognizing that they are dying to be and that it is good to be so.