J&K / Janne Schäfer and Kristine Agergaard
Purgatory
Video, 2:58 min
2013

J&K, Purgatory, still from video, 2013

J&K, Purgatory, still from video, 2013

Purgatory is a trailer for a film that will never be made: It is a preview to (your own) death! A sensory bombardment, which in true Hollywood style imitates the trailer format’s extremely dense, albeit diffuse language, which never reveals the contours of an actual narrative. Shot at night inside J&K’s installation The Perfect Stage a person awakes and finds herself dead. Visions appearing in the dark world show members of a mysterious society trying to create a perfect world through rituals in nature. Are these visions of a past or future life and can the dead protagonist have any influence on the course of action? The work explores how death or destruction can be regarded as a state of potentiality that may lead to new creation. Addressing overwhelming topics such as death and perfection through experiments and fragments corresponds to how a trailer for a non-existent film makes use of film language without arriving at a finished product. The film will never exist in its entirety, just like death and perfection can never be fixed nor understood.

Purgatory is made in collaboration with film maker Fritz Stolberg (camera and co-director). Sound design by Alex Fahl. Edited by Uli Schön.

Performers: J&K, Torben Longleg Simonsen, Mette Schwarz, Nissa Nishikawa, Philip Roitmann, James Williams, Clemens Williams, Gea Mey Williams, Mika Kokkonen and Mona Kokkonen

Purgatory was premiered at CPH:DOX, Copenhagen International Documentary Film Festival in the section New Danish Artists in 2013.

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J&K, Purgatory, stills from HD video, 2013

Related Projects

The Perfect Stage