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Tempest: an epilogue / film sculpture / installation view / 5:37 / 2016

The first time I encountered this you had already rung me for help. In your room full of old bedding dirty plates and the smell of scalp, I cut through the towelling cord of your dressing gown with a knife. More like a tourniquet than a noose, not very effective. Whatever you thought you wanted, your body disagreed. You asked too much of your hands; hoped they could see the task through, that their grip would endure, hold tight in spite of themselves. Still, these things are trial and error.

Tempest: an epilogue is a work that mourns, whilst questioning the very nature of mourning. Not quite a lamentation, Tempest utilises the grandeur of a storm as a symbol for the incomprehensible. Contrasting the scale of this natural event with a personal experience, (the internal and the external) both hold the potential to overwhelm. The installation is a ghost - it spills out. The image transgresses its own boundaries, somehow unable to assert itself. The camera roves, a restless eye, looking for something it cannot find. Not just searching for an expression of grief, but rather for permission, for reassurance. It is difficult to acknowledge the emotions we do not feel entitled to, difficult to feel them even. The narrator may not find solace, but manages to uncover tenderness in details, in recall. Tempest is an attempt to make space for complex emotions in the face of the unknowable, and the unspeakable. 

Exhibited at Techniques of Delusion, Helsinki and Porin Juhlaviikot - Galerie 3H+K, Pori

Streaming link here