Death Throes 2016
T. R. Carter and Stephen Gilette Video 11:08 mins
Every living thing is meant by nature to go through a cycle
of growth, activity in its prime, and decay leading to death. For human beings the initial stage of this
lifecycle – childhood – provides us with our first understandings of the last –
death. As much as a child is shielded
from the reality of death, their reaction to death is more natural – unencumbered
by the mythology and ritual that adults surround it with as a matter of
survival.
For western children of the 1980’s and 90’s a group of
seminal cultural artefacts form the foundation of an almost universal rite of
passage. The movies and television shows
of that era provide a common point of reference and collective nostalgia. A
nostalgia that helps them deal with the death of their own childhoods.
Amongst these artefacts some of the most potent images are
images of death. From the death of Mufasa in The Lion King to the death of The Skeksis Emporor in The Dark Crystal, these images have been
etched into the collective memory of a generation. Death Throes explores the
imagery of death within childhood cultural media. The work is a recreation of the drowning of Artax
in The Neverending Story as the
artists perform the death throes of their own childhoods.Love/City III: The PLANETARY - Testing Grounds
︎︎︎