My video installation project Portals revolves around the moments when social media platforms accidentally record someone’s death. Social media apps are now recording our every waking moment, including sometimes the accidental capture of the recorder’s own death. Their lives are put on display using apps like Periscope, Snapchat, Instagram, and Facebook. These videos are recorded from a first person perspective, from the eyes of the victim. What interests me is not the actual moment of death, but what the device captures after all movement has stopped. Typically these videos are shaky and chaotic, but then once the device reaches its final resting point, there is this eerie stillness about the video. What is captured is usually a crisp blue sky, with clouds passing by. Is the victim still conscious at this moment and viewing the sky with us? Is this the last thing they saw before they died? Can this sky be viewed as a portal in a sense to the next place for this body? By making the viewer aware of these moments in between life and death, we can cope with our understanding of the physical process of death.

My intention is to investigate these questions further by projecting these video portals onto various doors or vertical shaped areas. These videos feature social media clips transformed into portals that the viewer becomes immersed in. The idea is to have the three videos scattered in various, so that visitors can encounter them while they wander. All of these videos are surreal in nature, and put into question those moments between when we are living and when we have passed on.

Documentation

Video

Portals, Video, 3:55, 2016