Burial of the White Man is a bildungsroman about the friendship between artist Erik Niedling and writer Ingo Niermann. While in their thirties, they begin collaborating on a series of projects of ever-increasing ambition and scope: a tomb for all humans, a dissident replica of the U.S. Army, a German-Mozambican liberation movement… Each failure is answered with an even more outrageous endeavor.

Artist Erik Niedling would like to be buried in Pyramid Mountain, the largest tomb of all time, an artwork conceived by writer Ingo Niermann. To make this goal a reality, Niedling lives one year as though it were his last. The Future of Art: A Diary recounts the joys and horrors of that year.

In 1831 Honoré de Balzac wrote a short story, “The Unknown Masterpiece,” in which he invented the abstract painting. Almost 200 years later, writer Ingo Niermann tries to follow in his footsteps to imagine a new epoch-making artwork. Together with the artist Erik Niedling he starts searching for the future of art and, seeking advice, meets key figures of the art world.