UNDYING

af FLUK - Fyns laboratorie for ung kunst

UNDYING
Mette Hammer Juhl
14. marts - 6. april 2025

LIFESTYLE
Vestergade 24
5700 Svendborg

Fernisering fredag d.14.marts
Kl.16.00 - 19.00

“You can’t really understand what it’s like to be dead,” the psychic Philena Bruce said to the artist Mette Hammer Juhl during the latter’s filming for Rainbow Bridge. (Well, at least that’s what I remember Mette said that Philena said, and it suits me to run with it.) Philena’s claim (or my version of what Philena said) got me wondering. Surely, in the end, we can’t actually understand what it’s like to be anything apart from ourselves. But we can imagine what it’s like to be dead, can’t we? And surely imagining is a path to understanding. ∆

Death is treated as if unknowable. But the afterlife isn’t nearly as mysterious as it’s made out to be. Whether it’s a rationalist’s oblivion or a true believer’s paradise, we spend an awful lot of time thinking about what it’s like to be dead – and then making choices in the here-and-now based on those suppositions. We populate death with our imaginative endeavours, with our hopes and worries, ecstasies and depressions. From the forming of our politics to what we decide to consume, the impetus for many of the actions we take in this life are deeply connected with how we imagine, relate to, and grapple with the afterlife – #YOLO! Decisions cast into the silhouette of the shadow of our end.

- Excerpt from Nathaniel Budzinski's text for the publication Black Cat by Mette Hammer Juhl

Sted

LIFESTYLE
Vestergade 24
5700 Svendborg