Text from original Exhibition Catalogue:
Grief changes you, completely, utterly, profoundly. Traditionally regarded as a sacred communal process, grief is the great transformer; a process that according to Francis Weller (2015), offers a wild kind of alchemy that “transmutes suffering into fertile ground”. Starting from the premise that “Where there is sorrow, there is holy ground” (Oscar Wilde, 1857), This Fragile Present Moment (A Dirge for Sweet Things Lost) is a handmade cameraless 16mm film that interprets Elizabeth Kübler-Ross and David Kessler’s “Six Stages of Grief” (Denial, Anger, Bargaining, Depression, Reconstruction, Meaning) into a cinematic map for a transformative hero’s journey.
Since my son died in 2008, I have collected and preserved “sympathy flowers” given to me as expressions of condolence; “apology flowers” presented as silent requests for forgiveness; as well as “thinking of you flowers” sent to communicate care and support in difficult times. Originating in the Victorian-era, where flowers were used as a symbolic language to deliver silent messages in times of shadowy turmoil, today, bunches of flowers continue to a form of symbolic, silent exchange in situations that, more often than not, are simply beyond words.
To capture the visceral, transmutational terrain of grief, 16mm found footage was buried with ashes under commemorative plants in my garden, where the film’s emulsion was eaten away, alchemically altering the original narrative. At various times over the last 12 months, sections of found footage were resurrected, and preserved petals, leaves, and seeds from 14 years of collected and pressed flowers (organised into colours associated with Plutchik’s Wheel of Emotions), were directly collaged onto the film stock. Black leader (removed from the beginning and ending of found footage before burial) was also scratched, punched, excised, and pricked using gestures associated with anguish and sorrow.
The accompanying musique concrète-inspired soundscape was created using an Arturia “MicroFreak” algorithmic synthesiser connected to a PlantWave - a bio-data sonification device that detects electrical variations and biorhythms of plants as they grow, flourish, die and are reborn. Connected via MIDI input to the synthesiser, the PlantWave’s electrodes (attached to the commemorative plants in my garden), transformed the plants’ electrical conductivity into audio, allowing the plants to sing their own dirge of loss, remembrance and hope, that although starts in the desolate key of D# Minor, ends in the triumphant key of F# Major. The overall composition of injured celluloid, preserved flowers, black leader and soundscape reflects the chiastic cartography of grief – one that initiates the viewer into a ruptured and broken world, descends through the valley of death, then leads back along a path of growth, transcendence and renewal.
Over the last five years, as a palpable sense of collective grief emerged around the world, it’s often been difficult to acknowledge and mourn individual losses. This Fragile Present Moment (A Dirge for Sweet Things Lost) is created to be an animated, digital floral bouquet; simultaneously an individual expression of personal loss, grief and metamorphoses, as well as a heartfelt offering of care and hope for a fragile, grieving world.
