A
Cold Hand on a Cold Day – an exhibition by Jordan Baseman held at Fabrica,
Brighton.
The exhibition consisted of three films:
A
Cold Hand on a Cold Day - a site-specific commission by
Fabrica, narrated by a funeral director from Brighton who discusses her reasons
for not using the embalming process in her practice. The film was shown in the
main part of the gallery – the windows had been covered so the main light
source was from the film which consisted of mainly black and white images of
clouds passing across the screen – sometimes slowly sometimes quickly, between
the images of clouds were sections of film which consisted of white scratches
and flecks on a black background which wiggled across the screen. Baseman created
the grainy feel to the images by handling the film during developing which he
processed using large buckets.
Two further films by Baseman were shown in a smaller part
of the gallery:
The
Old Blood – which features the voice of Geoff Taylor, who has
embalmed 30,000 people over a 40 year career, during the film Taylor, describes
the techniques used to embalm a person and the work that goes into
reconstructing the appearance of the deceased if needed. The images used by
Baseman for this film are a series of old colour and black and white cine films
of individuals, friends and families enjoying life, included within the clips
is footage of a young man being embalmed.
How
to Manage Stillness – narrated by Dr Kate Woodthorpe from the
Centre for Death and Society at the University of Bath highlights the life
force of a person being impossible to recreate once gone and the importance of
living life to the full which can often get forgotten through the mundane
everyday things we do. The images in this film are from a funeral home and
capture a lot of behind the scenes footage of storage fridges, trolleys and
empty coffins.
All the films were around 20minutes each so for Second
Sight we had time to watch two of them – A
Cold Hand on a Cold Day and The Old
Blood.
Both the Second Sight sessions for this exhibition were
supported by new participants although numbers were down on the usual level of
participation for the workshops – talking to some of Second Sights regular attendees
it was suggested that this was likely to have been as a result of the content
of the exhibition which although very interesting can be a difficult subject to
discuss for some – so we were really pleased that both of the sessions ended
with fascinating discussions triggered by the exhibition content, object
handling and poetry.
We began the session by watching A Cold Hand on a Cold Day, Hattie gave a description of the visual
elements of the film before it started, as we did not want to talk over the
audio of the film while it was playing, everyone watching was given the option
of having a blanket around their shoulders – which could act as a ‘hug’ if
needed and also for a bit of extra warmth.
A
Cold Hand on a Cold Day: Image by Daniel Yanez Gonzalez.
The second film – The
Old Blood, was in a small side room off the main gallery space, again
Hattie gave a description of the visual elements of the film partly so as not
to talk over the audio but also because the audience had to wear headphones to
hear the narration by Geoff Taylor.
The
Old Blood: Image by Daniel Yanez Gonzalez.
Once both films had finished the groups returned to the
table for drinks, object handling and discussion.
For the exhibition a large round table was built at one
end of the gallery which was perfect for the objects we had to handle, these
included myrrh, frankincense, seed heads, rosemary, old photographs, autumn
leaves, apples, a tea set and lots of biscuits!
Tea
and discussion: images by Daniel Yanez Gonzalez.
The discussions were very varied at both of the
workshops, the presentation and content of the two films caused a lot of debate
- the majority of people having no idea of the process involved with embalming,
giving them to chance to consider what they would want for themselves. The
participants at Second Sight were incredibly open about their experiences with
death sharing with the group regrets about decisions made at difficult times
and the appreciation of the skill involved with disguising injuries that may
affect the appearance of the deceased.
Everyone in both sessions had an opinion on the
combination of image and audio of the works – some feeling the audio was
powerful enough to stand alone and the accompanying images were distracting, others
felt the images spoke louder than the words. Several people commented on the
meditative qualities of the black and white clouds from Cold Hand and the warmer feelings created by the cine films in Old Blood.
The environmental impact of embalming was discussed and
the variety of more ecological funerals available today. One of the sessions
was just after the disaster in the Philippines so we had been watching distressing
images of mass graves being dug and filled with un-named people on the news –
this triggered a debate on the planning of funerals as being something of a
luxury or a privilege which may not always be appreciated.
The objects for handling triggered memories of friends
and family mainly through smell, one participant in particular found the smell of myrrh took
him straight back to his grandmother’s house.
Object handling: image by Daniel Yanez Gonzalez.
The various seed heads and fruits seemed to capture the
importance of past and future life in the beauty of the spent flowers or
sweetness of the fruit which also held within them the seeds of future
generations. Participants discussed the aging process and the effects – good and
bad that people who have been part of our lives, can have the ability to go on
influencing us even after they have gone.
Image
by Daniel Yanez Gonzalez.
