DANMite,Installation
“Experience Near Death (END)”
CM Griffiths
March 2008
“Experience Near Death” is an installation that explores a collection of personal stories with word associations and imagery from people who have been physically or emotionally near someone who dies.
END begins with my own experience near death through the procession of my husband’s illness and eventual death. Like Kaprow, I know how life-experiential situations do lend themselves to the idea of “Happenings”. That experience, even a year later, although shifting and changing, continues and manifests itself in different ways. With this “Happening” now added to my repertoire, my database, and my memories, it touches every aspect of my existence, still.
This project will act as a homage to the transformative experience that tends to deeply alter and affect change in the lives of the people who witness their loved ones going through this physical and mental process that ends in death.
END will have 5 components: (1) three interconnected spaces; (2) four films to be projected in these spaces; (3) a book to be distributed after visitors have passed through the three spaces; (4) visitor participation by passage through the three spaces and performances by a nurse attendant; and (5) documentation.
(1) Three interconnected spaces titled Waiting, Exiting, and Entering.
Waiting The waiting area will be situated outside END. For all intents and purposes, it will feel like a surreal waiting room with a floor of carpet or linoleum that will designate the space and be cordoned off. It will have chairs that aren’t too comfortable, fake plants, a nurses’ counter which will have a vase of undelivered florist- arranged flowers and a clipboard with a sign-in sheet for the participants to sign in to enter END. Memento mori artwork that I will produce will hang on the walls and still images from the short films. There will be a wall clock that does not work. There will be copies of the book I am producing for viewers to keep. The prevailing smell in the area will be of hospital disinfectant. There will be a door, next to the nurses’ counter, that viewers will pass through to enter END after the names of five individual’s names are called at the nurses’ station. Above the door will be an “exit” sign.
Exiting Upon entering END, the participants will be in an enclosed space with either a square or circular floor plan (depending on the space provided); the space will be dimly lit by a lighted sign that says “Enter” over the door that the participants will leave the room. In the room will be four projectors, one per wall. A wall-in air conditioner, computer and generator will be present but concealed. The projectors will show the four films on separate walls or a collage of the four films that will last 15 minutes total. The air conditioner will control the temperature by keeping the space cooler than the waiting area; the chilliness is intended to make participants feel slightly uncomfortable. The presentation begins after the door closes. After the films are over, the viewers will be instructed via the film to exit through the door marked “Enter.”
Entering After exiting, the visitors will be given written instructions and the opportunity to record their reactions to END via a video booth that they will control.
(2) Four Films
Each film will be 5-10 minutes in length. The four films will be shown inside the enclosed space. The soundtrack for these four films will be produced separately.
film one: Interviews with people who have had an experience near death. (Myself, and as many other people as I can find). This film will include audio of the conversations.
film two: Footage of non-descript hospital corridors.
film three: Words scrolling while falling and dropping off screen.
film four: Observations of saturated colors, juxtapose very bright and very dark.
(3) Book
The book will be a compilation of notes taken while in the hospital with my husband (the notebook); copies of cards sent (actual notes and cards written and scanned); black and white staged photographs of artifacts such as needles, bags, tubing, hospital gowns, etc., etc.; and planning sketches of installation ideas. The book will be 100-pages long, hard-bound, and will be giving away at the installation.
(4) Participation/performance
participation: Visitors to the installation will participate in three ways: waiting to enter END, experiencing what there is to see and hear inside END, and voluntarily recording themselves in a video log just outside END. These video logs will be archived and used to inform the running film being shown in the installation at a later date.
performance: There will be a nurse attendant played by the artist.
The participants will help themselves to a copy of the book, as a gesture of thanks, to keep.
(5) Documentation
A video documentary of the installation to be produced over the June 4 -8th, 2008 showing in San Jose.
The thesis paper will contextualize the project historically, theoretically, and socio-culturally. In particular, the 5 components will be contextualized. The paper will be divided into three parts analogous to the three spaces; Waiting, Exiting, and Entering.
Waiting / the unknown will be framed as a discussion about the history of installation art as an art practice or genre, especially as “new” media emerge. I will cite specific works by artists such as Felix Gonzalez-Torres, Matthew Barney, James Turrell, Bill Viola, and Linda Montano, works that, I will argue, have a correlation with END.
Exiting / the death will be framed as a discussion about the theory surrounding installation art as an art practice or genre. I will begin from Jennifer González’s “Installation Art” in Encyclopedia of Aesthetics, edited by Michael Kelly, (Oxford University Press, 1998) to explore its relationship to performativity, performative technologies, and “intermedia”.
Entering / the rebirth will be framed as a discussion of how socio-cultural aspects of an event such as The Temple project at Burning Man Art Festival that facilitates public and private mourning, a contemplative walk around the Great Stupa a visit to the Rocky Mountain Shambhala Center, Red Feather, Colorado which is intended to relieve grief, text such as the Tibetan book of the Dead, or Joan Didion’s A year of Magical Thinking; and song lyrics dealing with death and life (e.g. Matisyahu “Jerusalem”)