everybody knows
In 2018, I started a project to explore climate change mainly I think because it is difficult to see how ones personal actions may make a difference on a global scale – you seem small and insignificant in the worldwide scenario of global warming. But your actions is probably the only thing that you may influence. My project started with the question – Why should it be any different for planet Earth? – and the first work was the video Everybody Knows.
But the way he handled the subject was poetic and had me reading several of his books where he discusses climate change in a way that includes all of us. It is this feeling that I have wanted to use for my work.
Everybody Knows is an audio-visual essay (8:20 min) and based on the structure of an ancient Greek drama and it includes a prologue, scenes, an exodus and a choir that comments on the story line. In my version, the choir is all female and not like before where the choir used to be all male.
The ancient dramas were demanding; they were trilogies that started at sunrise and went on till sunset. It is difficult to imagine this kind of patience in a contemporary audience who is used to the online take on the world and my video includes a fast forward function and very early on, the total duration of Everybody Knows is displayed so you know just how long – or how little – time I require
from you; a function that might trigger an inner progress bar in the back of your mind.
Something Else is a short video collage (2:20 min) including selected elements from the first video plus clips and ideas that did not fit into Everybody Knows.
Disturbing Beings is a still from the video that is run through an online generator that changes photo files according to set algorithms. It is printed on PVC and is 320 cm x 180 cm high. Wonders 1-3 are PVC prints of 100 x 80 cm also run through an online generator.
