#flat death

The piece, Deadness, balances both interest and intrigue whilst managing the sensitive subject matter of death. Focusing on embalming and funerals, and the personal and professional relationships societies have to these, the non-fiction and interview based narrative presents a more informative approach to the issue, rather than an overly emotive one. Because of this, the work becomes much more accessible and, in my opinion, does not seek to overwhelm any viewers.

Flat Death, Open Eye Gallery, 2016 © Ted Oonk

This is in fact part one of Baseman’s 2013 exhibition Deadness, consisting of re-appropriated 35mm slides, projected from five projectors onto two walls, in a rhythmic arrangement. This accompanies a recorded spoken narrative by Dr./Prof. John Troyer (deputy director for the centre of death and society at the University of Bath), of his experiences in this field. Lasting around thirty minutes, Deadness does not veer from its communicative approach, and could even be categorised as an essay film, in terms of it’s format and content.

Jordan Baseman, Deadness, 2013. Still courtesy the artist and Matt’s Gallery, London

Driven by interviews and discussions with people in professions relating to the coinciding concept, it seems very much important to the execution of the narration that the format remains natural and conversational. Clearly but comfortably spoken, and on occasion, but not disrespectfully, laughing to himself whilst talking, the narrator appears very human; a quality which I believe would be lost, and would be of great loss to the work if the monologue had been simply read from a script.

Flat Death, Open Eye Gallery, 2016 © Ted Oonk

The narrator talks the viewer through anecdotes of embalmers and their techniques; of the relatives of the deceased, their grief and requests to see the deceased, and so on. And alongside this, he addresses notions of death and bereavement, embalming, the spectacle and photography. The idea of the ‘spectacle’ in this work, however, is not so apparent. Instead, the images of what in some instances could be considered so, now manifest as further information adjoined to the spoken word.

Jordan Baseman, Deadness, 2013. Still courtesy the artist and Matt’s Gallery, London

The images used, all of which were purchased online, are of corpses in coffins at funerals and wakes, as well as in funeral parlours. Showing the deceased in their final visual state, in the state which their loved ones will see them in last. Multiple shots of the same people, some in black and white and some in colour, some outdoors and some inside, some depicting funeral goers also in the frame. Well choreographed and rhythmically paced, the some 200 plus images flow perfectly, neatly complimenting the narration. The photographs themselves alternate between all five projections at once, to just some, to just one.

Flat Death, Open Eye Gallery, 2016 © Ted Oonk

The notions of embalming, wakes, funerals, and photographing the deceased are interesting in regards to the concepts that it arrises concerning death and memory in the context of photography; a point touched upon by Roland Barthes in Camera Lucida, from which the exhibition title, Flat Death, originates. Addressing this, Barthes states the photograph, ‘produces Death while trying to preserve life.’ (Barthes, 1993, p.92) An idea which adds significant metaphorical meaning to Deadness. The idea of embalming – preserving the essence of an individuals ‘life’ after life, and post-mortem photography, becomes, instead, an attempt to preserve moments as memories in a state of timeless remembrance.

Jordan Baseman, Deadness, 2013. Still courtesy the artist and Matt’s Gallery, London

On a whole this work addresses a cultural understanding of the relationship which both individuals and professionals have with the deceased, as well as how society bereaves and confronts the concept of death and the actuality of death. And this is all carefully shrouded under the ideas based around photography, which connect all of the afore discussed issues into this one particularly well informed and well executed work; Deadness.

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Written by Kyle Nathan Brown

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Flat Death: Edgar Martins & Jordan Baseman continues at Open Eye Gallery until Sunday 3 April 2016.

Sara Cwynar

Sara Cwynar, featured on the cover of Conveyor Magazine Issue No. 5, has an exhibition opening tonight at Foxy Production. If you are in NYC tonight definitely stop by… 

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SARA CWYNAR — FLAT DEATH RECEPTION: FRIDAY, 4 APRIL, 6-8PM APRIL 4, 2014 TO MAY 3, 2014

FOXY PRODUCTION 623 W 27th Street,  New York, NY 10001

Sara Cwynar assembles images from objects and found photographs that court feelings of time passing. Using collage and re-photography, she produces composite images that call to mind old magazine advertisements, postcards, or catalogs.

Cwynar is interested in dated commercial images; in the failure, with time, of their visual trickery; in the waning of their seductive powers. Her works highlight how the once familiar becomes foreign; how the fetishized object can lose its luster; how glamour can fade.

Flat Death combines sculptural constructions that are photographed, printed, tiled, and re-photographed, together with images from darkroom manuals that are decomposed using a scanner. Cwynar’s process is circular; she starts and finishes with a photograph, after a journey of intervention and manipulation that ultimately disrupts the smooth surface and the perspective of the stock image.

Like a reel of film frames, a row of prints line two walls, while two large floral still life works hang on adjacent walls. Together, the works impart an uncanny sense of a lost world of images that Cwynar has collected and recalibrated to present as evidence that images never die, they just float somewhere between the traditional realm of the analog and the Internet, or between complex emotional attachments and kitsch.