The Sweet Here After Project is based on Dante
Aligheri´s Divine Comedy. The project consists of
several video works, which reinterpret the several
circles of hell and paradise form a contemporary
point of view (no angels, no ancient heroes or
hereos of any kind, no kings, no holy persons
etc., but modern locations of hope and aspiring
prospect, e.g. a casino, the white cube of a
gallery or a museum, the Broadway of prolific
theatre culture).
Dante´s spirituality which allowed him to draw a
clear vision of the afterlife, is gone and, at
least from our contemporary perspective, nobody
can really know what comes after death. Maybe it
will all be the same, same places like casinos,
Broadway theatres and other places of well-being
or boreness.
The only thing we know from people who came back
after passing away, is that there is either a
pleasant experience (roughly about 2/3) or a bad
one (about 1/3 in total) before really passing
away.
The Footage of the video series is based on flower
bouquets, which are used to decorate living rooms
as well as graves.
One of them is the last one I gave my mother as a
birthday present to her 89th birthday. One day
after in the morning she passed away.
THE WHITE ROOM
(4k, color, video mapping, single channel
installation, 2min 40sec, 2022)
“After death souls enter the white space, when
leaving the body.”
There are hints from people, who came back after
they seem to have died that there are so many
differences about what they told about, they have
experiencened. 2/3 of them have seen the paradise
and 1/3 have seen hell. But what impact has
memory? Some are drown in the beautiful memories
of their past, travel experiences, good
relationsips with friends and family. Others are
lost in big flooding of bad memories, which came
up from the past, especially if they had bad
experiences in their childhood, e.g. abuse, war,
death etc..
These souls are in hell, whether they had turned
to the bad during their life or not.
This work is dedicated to my belove mum, who had
been expelled from their hometown in her
childhood, which soon after has been erased from
the surface of the earth, Königsberg in
Ostpreussen, replaced by the Russian goverment by
a new city called Kaliningrad. So during all her
lifetime my mother was a kind of homeless, because
in every identity document her birth place
appeared, which didn´t exist anymore.
THE SWEET HERE AFTER: RUN, LTTLE ROYAL PALM, RUN!,
single channel video, color, 0min53sec excerpt of
1min03sec, 2011-2022
THE SWEET HERE AFTER: BEAUTIFUL MEMORY, STAY!,
single channel video, color, 0min59sec
THE SWEET HERE AFTER: LAST MEMORY, EVER!, single
channel video, color, 01min02sec from 1min40sec,
2011-2022
THE SWEET HERE AFTER: BYE, BYE, MOMORIES, single
channel video, color, 01min07sec of 01min40sec,
2011-2022
THE SWEET HERE AFTER: AGONY, single channel video,
color, 1min43sec, excerpt of 2min 53s, 2011-2022
shown at:
2022 SIDEWALK VIDEO GALLERY, The Sweet Here After:
Wallpaper, Boston, MA, USA