Accumulative Losses
I spent the first two months of 2019 in Memorial Sloan Kettering next to a dear friend as he died. After a time he was no longer able to speak and I began to fixate on the numbers and lines and blinking lights that indicated his life force; still at play though fading. I watched him breath and I watched the condensation of his breath collected in his respirator tubes. I watched him softly leave us. Living has all it’s textures and it’s fluids; it’s gorgeous and ungainly truths. Sweat, Blood, Cum, Breath, Heat, Pus, Dander. All these things are the solid proof that we are here. And everything that holds us together must at some point fall apart and away and out and into itself. This work is made from quietness and grieving and is in praise of our hopeless fragility.
100 Breaths addresses the way I became focused on his breath and the quiet gentleness of his moving chest; the trace of him mingled in the air of the room when he was gone.