Embedded Files
A woman's mouth is seen and starts to lip sync the song by Holly Cole, Make it Go Away. The camera swings back and forth, slowly moving down the body of the woman never revealing her eyes. The movement is such that one feels she is dancing with someone behind the camera or rather the camera is her microphone. The spectator eventually reads the words, "I am Gary Gilmore" on her t-shirt.
Gilles Deleuze talks about the word "plainte" in the video ABCédaire as something that is too big for someone. If someone's arm hurts, he complaints because his arm becomes "too big for him", a force that is too great for our small selves.
This video puts into play this notion combining Holly Cole's words being sung by a woman posing as the tragic character of Gary Gilmore.
The End, 2001
Black video screen where very slowly a fade in of white sentences appears, remains for 8 seconds, and then slowly fades out again before the next one. These are the last words of various inmates before their executions. There are no images in this video - only what remains of these people. A breathing sentence on a video screen allowing the viewer a glimpse of their last thoughts before the end.
Excerpt from the Exhibit's catalog:
Kate Ross’s video The End (2001) employs a minimalist approach to memorialize, without judgment, a generally forgotten segment of the United States population: death row inmates. The piece marks the last words spoken by executed prisoners. For eight seconds, a sentence appears boldly in white letters against a somber black ground—“I look stretched out like a cooked goose”—then slowly fades, and is replaced by another anonymous, disembodied thought, forming a silent chorus that humanizes a systematic death.
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