Aninut (72 Hours)
Aninut (72 Hours) depicts the home of a family member recorded in the ritual 72 hours between her death and burial. The piece is comprised of five projections, each depicting one room in the house. In each projection, all four walls of the room are sutured panoramically, creating an otherwise impossible vantage (perspectival space) vis-a-vis the apparatus. In the images, the camera is positioned as the gaze of an otherwise absent or vacated subject, while the depicted interiors are wanting of a human body.
Documenting each wall of each room is a performance invoking photographic and cinematic mythology, exposing the desire to evidence, record, arrest, and repeat the finite ad-infinitum.
The videos formally inhabit the space between photography and video in order to access questions about the interstitial period after death but before burial. With this new work I am continuing an ongoing interrogation of the myths and problematics involved in visually representing what can be felt but not seen.
Aninut, n.: The ritual time period distinguished in Jewish tradition between a person's death and their burial, the in between time. [Hebrew]