Into the Subconscious of Loss and Fear

Questions of the meaning of life and death and feelings of loss and fear have plagued the minds of many individuals, both in past and present. In search of an answer, people have often turned to religion as a means for understanding and reflecting on the progression of life, death, and the emotions associated with them. In response, many artists have taken inspiration from churches as contemplation centers to explore these questions by means of their artwork. Oude Kerk (Old Church), in Amsterdam, has provided a space for artists to display their investigations into these topics with the Once in a Lifetime exhibition. This exhibition invites the church’s visitors to reflect on life and the mortality of the human condition. In Once in a Lifetime, Yehudit Sasportas explores the relationship between the human conscious and subconscious relations with loss and the emotions associated, such as fear and anxiety, through a film projection entitled The Lightworkers (2010).

            This work features a progression of primarily black and white images projected on a black screen in a dark room. The images consist of forest or swamp scenes, with trees toppling over and logs falling from the sky. The floor of the scape subtly mutates and warps as elements move or fall. Vertical black bars scan the scene, and a white spotlight appears and searches the scene. Ominous music plays in the background, with a constant pulse, like a heartbeat, persisting as the top layers of the music mutate with the imagery. The ten-minute video plays on loop, transcending the notion of time and expressing the ongoing feelings of both loss and pulsing fear and anxiety. Overall, the work sets an eerie atmosphere for its viewers. In this film projection, Sasportas seeks to engage the viewer’s internal thoughts and hesitations of loss and the subconscious dissection of loss in a psychological space. 

The first thing one notices when entering the viewing space of the work is the darkness of the black room, forcing one to neglect all sense of space and enter into a state of unknown. The feeling of loss created in the room is articulated by the absence of any light and concrete features—there aren’t even seats for viewing the work. Sitting on the floor of the space, the viewer blends in with the room, and the work turns into an internal experience and a mental space, even with the presence of others in the viewing space. The darkness evokes loneliness and vulnerability, allowing the other elements of the piece to penetrate into the subconscious of the viewer.

The music plays a large role in creating the atmosphere of the work. While in the room, the viewers already have a sense of loss in the physical space they occupy, but the thumping heartbeat of the music immerses the viewers even further in the psychological space, into their minds and bodies. There, they are confronted by the emotions that the other musical elements probe. A static hum playing on top of the constant heartbeat perpetuates the feeling of loss because the sound is fuzzy and has no direction in terms of musical progression. Paired with the imagery, the lack of direction of the hum creates an uneasy feeling throughout the duration of the work. Also, a synthesized piano fades in and out of the music with a mystical tune, giving the feeling of searching. The tune is slow and calm, but creates a sense of unease because of its spontaneity and lack of a clear musical ending and beginning. It also imitates the falling of the trees and logs with the falling progressions of notes. The music provides a platform to completely block out the outer world and engage fully into the feelings and thoughts that the work produces.

            The chosen scenes and imagery for the piece are strange and dreamy, and it seems as if supernatural forces play a role in the manipulation of the scenes, giving the piece an ominous atmosphere. The deconstruction of the forest with the toppling trees and tumbling logs parallels the weakening of the one’s mind when feeling emotions such as fear and loss. The warping of the floor also imitates the uneasiness and unbalanced thoughts of someone experiencing the anxiety of loss. By witnessing these elements externally in an image, but also internally as one escapes a sense of space in the dark room, emotions associated with loss are illustrated concretely, like a map of the mind. The white spotlight and the black vertical bar prompt the notion of searching for answers and understanding of the scene and what is happening, much like one does when feeling lost. At one point in particular in the film, the screen is mostly black with only the single spotlight scanning the scene. This depicts the feeling of loss extremely well and the subconscious attempt to understand the feeling. 

            Overall, the film successfully engages viewers, enthralling them in the exploration of their subconscious in the context of loss. The decision to loop the film continuously, allowing people to come and go as they please, mirrors the futility and cyclical nature of the human experience, life, and death. Just as a life begins and ends at unknown endpoints, so does the repetition of the video. One easily loses sense of time, sitting for many iterations of the video in the dark room, noticing something different in every moment of the work. Also, the work captures one’s attention in their attempt to understand what one feels when viewing the piece and what it means, and this occupation of the mind is exactly what the piece aims to achieve.