The Final Month

10 LCD screens 10”, 10 USB sticks, 10 films on loop, 0:25”-1:00”

The Final Month is a video installation with 10 screens, built into a wall. Each screen shows the same hand in full size, in chronological order, against a dark background. It is the hand of the artist’s father, whom she filmed in the last month of his life, up to and including the day after his death.

The images are short loops, choreographies of a life that disappears, while at the same time it is an attentive study the metamorphosis of muscles, tendons, veins and skin.

It starts with a very alive hand, which seems to be talking, to a hand that comforts itself, in which you could see pain and evoke a more animal association. To a hand that no longer moves, just a lightly throbbing vein. The series ends with the image in which you see that life has disappeared from the body and life outside becomes tangible. The Final Month has as subject her father’s hand, but it is not about him. With this work the artist explores what life is, at the same time that is exactly what disappears when someone dies.

Videostills

Made possible with the generous support from the Prins Bernhard Cultuurfonds, Mondriaan Stichting, Stokroos Foundation and Fiction Factory

Installation photos: Gert Jan van Rooij