Ungrave

65 inch LCD screen, USB key, wood, program-generated video (1080p, 14h), 145 x 80 x 8 cm, 2020

On the ground, a very large screen shows the image of a tombstone whose inscriptions are constantly being rewritten, as if it had remained alive. Its first name, dates and epitaph are constantly erased and rewritten, often very quickly.

While the dead are those who, by definition, never respond anymore, Ungrave establishes the fiction of a zombie death, whose technology would have perverted the very principle and which would continue to bug ad vitam æternam, constantly questioning its existence and the best way to sum it up. The project evokes ironically the transhumanist ideology of an unlimited rewriting of life, where everything would still be possible, even after death. It is also a vision of hell, where traditionally the souls continue to wander and act, without never being able to get this over with or finding peace.

The name on the tombstone is alternatively John or Jane Doe. The date of death varies constantly, but the date of birth is always 2020, evoking a person who is somehow already promised to a “becoming-program”, in the Deleuzian sense of the term.

Produced with the support of Biennale Chroniques, 2020