Entomb to Disinter part I-III
2019-2020
This work contains three parts: a photo installation, a video work and an installation with diagam. The work touches upon questions around post-death rituals and examines the concept of remains.
This installation was made in the context of a six-month-long course Survival of the Fittest, which takes its starting point from the Natural History Museum in Stockholm: ”The project give rise to questions about cultural heritage, colonialism, posthumanism, evolution and extinction.” (Lina Selander, 2019)
My entry point was a visit to the basement of the Swedish Museum of Natural History. An archive of extinct species in glass jars filled with formalin. Time stood still, they looked like they were alive but were trapped in the millisecond silence. It was like looking at a photograph. After this, I began to investigate what the definition of a remain really means. Could it be more than just a body part?
I initiated a collaboration with a historian who is responsible for a collection of human remains by the racial biologist Anders Retzius. We met a number of times and went through the story of the remains; he showed me medical archives at the Hagströmer Library and in the end I also got to film castings of the remains, the skulls. I never got to see the actual remains.
Entomb to Disinter part I
2019-2020
16 photographs, acrylic glass, steel plate, metal
rod
Installation view: Survival of the Fittest, Accelerator
120x60cm
Images from my family archive became a kind of relic. They acted as proof of someone, or something's existence. I transferred images from the family archive to transparent film and placed them over still images from video footage of the extinct species in glass jars. When looking from above, a double exposure appears.
Part I, the photo installation
When visiting the archive of extinct species in glass jars, I experienced something new. Time was frozen. The silence was perceptible. I encountered an echo between time and silence. Similar to pausing a video clip: the image could pause but you’d know it would be continued because the imagery proves that the movement could not cease. Time stands still for a moment but will continue. However, the sound ceases and you’re totally without any assurance that the sound would ever appear again. An echoing between time and silence
In the photo installation, I have chosen images from my family archive that I perceive as having the same appearance as the glass jars. A view from a window, a box of jewelry, an Iranian haft-sin (seven s’), a close up on a mouth where there’s one tooth missing. I have then placed the images from my family archive, on top of the images from the extinct animals in glas jars, with a distance that creates an echo – a double exposure emerges.
Entomb to Disinter part II
2019-2020
Stills from digital video
Colour and B/W, silent, 07:18 min
The film is a summary and collection of what it means to preserve an existence. Both 'after death rituals' and objects are put together using the montage as a tool. Occasionally a text tells about how to bury someone. Pictures appear from Norra Kyrkogården, a graveyard adjacent to the site where Retzius' collection of remains is located and also where my father is buried.
Part II, the video
A video where I collect and compose traces after a soul has departed: remains in terms of solid objects, body parts, areas - as much as abstract awareness of a trace. In one scene, an archive number for one of the animals in the glass jars is shown in four images. They are destroyed in a slow rhythm. Then a phone number appears. Is this phone number a remain because it belonged to someone who once existed? The video aims to discuss how we preserve a loss, not only concerning the different methods of post-death rituals, but also how we continue living with that loss.
In some scenes you can see a grainy black-and-white image. I chose to film the dead animals in cans and castings of the skulls with a spy camera, a very small camera with no monitor. I wanted to physically approach these bodies, both the animals and the casts of the skulls. I placed the camera right in front of my eye, and began to move around these objects. The movement of the camera is shaky and therefore the body behind the camera is as present as the body in front of the camera. A way to examine the camera’s way of sculpting an image.
Entomb to Disinter del III / Entomb to Disinter part III
2019-2020
Diagram printed on transparent paper, 8 metal balls
Installation view: Survival of the Fittest, Accelerator
30x30cm
Also included in this installation is a diagram. This being the first time I had used the diagram in an installation, I was not sure how to use it. I experimented with it on site and used physical geometric shapes to complement the geometric shapes in the diagram. The diagram is placed on a square small podium, with metal balls on and around it.
Part III, the diagram
The diagram states that death wouldn’t exist without life; a loss wouldn’t appear without a collection; opposites are never separate, they’re always in need of each other. Because of this, the loss never actually departs, hence the title Entomb to Disinter. Bury to then excavate.
Excerpt from catalogue Survival of the Fittest
