Single channel video.
Using absurd comedy and overactive censorship to address social awkwardness around matters of death and mortality, 'Will and Testament' presents the artist attempting to produce a video of her last wishes without ever directly discussing death. The mosaic censor block becomes a digital foe, arresting the flow of the content as she loops over and over, trying to find a sufficiently euphemistic way of discussing her own demise. Every time she uses the word ‘death’ or a euphemism related to it, her mouth is obscured by a censorship mosaic effect and her voice is distorted. Tension builds as she tries out more and more ridiculous terms for dying in the failed attempt to avoid repression, including gestures and archaisms.
Sarah Walker's work uses comedy and theatricality to create surprising moments of defamiliarisation, where difficulties around comprehending and describing death and catastrophe become apparent, and taboos begin to break down. 'Will and Testament' reveals our public squeamishness around frank conversations by extrapolating polite language to its ridiculous limits.