VIDEO HD DIGITIZED FROM VHS | 16:9 | FEEDBACK LOOP| SOUND | COLOUR | TRIPTYCH
I have been rewriting the
psalm ‘De Profundis’, reading Heiddeger's ‘Being and Time’. Existentialism
comforted my spiritual crisis. It gave voice to the feeling of Horror-vacui, to
plumb the abyss of Being. The video expresses and interrogates the presence and
absence of Being. It is a prayer. Visual
inspiration were specific paintings by L. Freud, Schiele and Hopper. “De
Profundis - Affresco III” is the third in a work composed of three videos in
sequence.
The focus of the video is
the ‘I’ in relation to Being. My body is an abandoned being. My soul invokes
Being, to abandon itself. The two utterances, thus placed, are paradoxical.
Abandonment is a dual word, meaning betrayal and trust. The action of sinking
and rising into the couch seeks to express the pain of Faith. Rising and
falling, folding in on oneself, is an action of hope, which perjures
revelation, expresses the suffering of Belief. Believing in Self and You. The
bed welcomes suffering, like the tomb death and resurrection. Man as fish,
‘Ichthys’ (provisional title of the video), sinks down to dialogue with Being.
The Being of the everyday being, the Being of the human being, the spiritual
Being. The video depicts the mortal despair of the ‘I’, the despondency that
numbs, the mortal sleep that sometimes seizes us and we feel. The red loop-colour feedback effect was not
edited in post-production, but projected during filming. The beam of light
fragments the flesh, exposing its slits. The lacerations are glimpses, where
the body becomes a kaleidoscope of the soul. The absolute anguish, can be the
threshold towards the investigation of the multiple being ‘I’ and the absolute
Being. Colour is applied to the body, like pigment to fresh plaster. ‘De
Profundis’ is an existential affresco and at the same time, a plea for Love.
Red is the colour I gave to Being.