“We all carry a dead child within us.“ Christian Boldtanski quotes Tadeusz Kantor
We move through an abandoned house. The rooms bear witness to the fact that people once lived here. Reality and fiction, present and past merge together. As if in a nightmare, we rush through the rooms and are repeatedly confronted with an old class photo. On the back of the real photo is written: “Class of 1911.” Who were these people? Does anyone still remember them? I lend them my eyes and bring them back to life post mortem – an artificial liveliness.
The video work ties in with a tradition that is largely forgotten today: post-mortem photography. In this practice, the recently deceased were photographed, either alone as a portrait or together with relatives, arranged as if they were still alive. These images served not only as a memento, but also as an attempt to halt the moment of disappearance.
Sitting among these children, I act as a link between yesterday and today and think aloud about the fear of disappearing. By inscribing myself into the historical class photo, I transfer the tradition of post-mortem photography into a contemporary, digital visual language. The work reveals how images – then as now – are used to outwit transience: they preserve presence, create a deceptive liveliness, and shift the moment of farewell into a timeless in-between.
