HD video, 5mins
November 2007
“I your dear friend am in my self undone, by reason of a burden that lieth hard upon me.”
The title of this piece comes from a line in John Bunyan’s “Pilgrim’s Progress”, a religious allegory from the 17th century. Christian, the protagonist (and my near namesake) must journey from the City of Destruction to Mount Zion, on the way shedding his heavy burden of sin.
I must make it clear that I am myself not an adherent of the Christian or any other faith, but that I have made a quite direct and literal tribute to the allegorical foundations of the original text. My burden is two rolls of household carpet, salvaged from the street near my home in Amsterdam.
Additionally, I am not altogether comfortable with the notion of sin; memory, responsibility, mistakes and indifference are instead my load. At the end of the film, I face north east across the grey foment of the North Sea towards Scotland, the country of my youth and of the greater majority of my memories, but a place I no longer call home. The viewer is left to decide if this be a “look back in anger”, or an acceptance of the past.
I your dear friend am in my self undone