'DNA - Two strands into one.' (2023 remake only) On the Medical Deck, several notes on the Marker can be seen covering the walls.'The body is holy and the Church is the safekeeper of this holy vessel.' 'Give unto the Church and the Church will give unto you.' 'Live for the Church, die for the Church.' 'Don't you dare question my faith! Believe or die!' 'The Black Marker is really really close. 'The time has finally come! Don't be afraid and rejoin the holy one Altman, our martyr, our pioneer.' 'The pilgrimage is at hand! Unity is at hand!' 'Humans will learn that by death of their worldly spirit they will be reborn in unity as a stronger community unending.' 'The unity future of mankind is a place, a physical journey that must be taken, a pilgrimage reserved for only the privileged ones when the time comes.' 'Do not fear death for it is the ultimate journey. Several of these same messages are also seen as part of the 'Nicole' hallucinations and can appear on the ship's monitors. In Dead Space and Dead Space (2023), the symbols can be found all over the walls on the Ishimura and the Aegis VII colony, written either in blood or in marker pen.The “Japanese” aesthetic manifests itself in The Dead in the silent film art of the Swiss film director Emil Nägeli, which also mirrors Kracht’s literary aesthetics as taciturnity. Above all, taciturnity and the rejection of rational dialogue are aspects of the aesthetic presented by Tanizaki in In Praise of Shadow, which Kracht adapts in The Dead. The novel contrasts Western, ‘rational’ culture with the spiritual world of the foreign Japanese culture. On the one hand, The Dead is marked by Kracht’s perception of Japan by his choice of subject and setting on the other hand, this also shapes the novel’s stylistic and narrative style. Thus, Tanizaki’s essay “In Praise of Shadows” (originally published in 1933) is already referred to in the In Praise of Shadows chapter in the travel essay Der gelbe Bleistift (2000), and Kracht even prefaces his novel The Dead (2016) with a quotation from a poem by Tanizaki. This article deals with the significance of Japanese aesthetics for Christian Kracht’s poetics, especially of the Japanese author Junichiro Tanizakis (1886–1965).

Dead space marker concept art