Vanitas – Self-portrait

2012

video loop 1,54′
sound: Scanner – Robin Rimbaud
special effects: Sunčana Kuljiš

Video Vanitas – Self-portrait presents a hypnotic image of the continuous dissolution of the author’s face, skull and brain. The repetitive liquefying interplay between the exterior and the technologically-visualized exterior posits the question of visible and invisible, physical and mental. However, the image of the skull is not only a metaphor for the transience of life and the inevitability of death; in relation to the sound of rhythmic respiration it evokes death as a faithful companion of life and its faithful shadow, and in turn illuminates the meaning and value of life, heightening the consciousness of human existence.

(Special thanks: Clinical Institute of Radiology, University Medical Center Ljubljana)