DEATH ON CAMERA - www.thelastimage.nl
participatory online exhibition on Tumblr
The exhibition www.thelastimage.nl explores death as depicted in the media society, from the birth of photography to contemporary cyberspace. The exhibition invites guests, visitors and netizens to upload contributions for the virtual museum space.
19-12-2013 t/m 31-12-2014
www.thelastimage.nl
Lebanese artist Rabi
h Mroué works with real life footage from Syrian activists who died whilst filming with their mobile device. These protesters actually recorded their own deaths, which were then uploaded to the Internet and distributed amongst the online community. American photographer Richard Drew took a most haunting picture of the 9/11 events in New York City: a man falling to his death after he jumped from the burning World Trade Center. The photo of ‘falling man’ went global and until this day fires people’s collective imaginations about the mysterious moment of dying. The virtual exhibition www.thelastimage.nl takes a close look at these and other heartrending ‘last images’ in order to delve deep into the growing body of visual data concerning death in the public domain. What ideas and purposes lie behind a publicly presented ‘last image’ of a deceased individual? Which ‘last images’ remain still private? The website collects relevant works of art, documentary pictures, amateur footage, philosophical texts and personal stories about the meaning of a ‘last image’. Through a platform of social media everybody can upload materials for the virtual museum space. The Last Image is a series of exhibitions about death on camera presented in the Dutch Funeral Museum Tot Zover (‘So Far’). Since the invention of photography images of death and the deceased have gradually gained exposure outside the private sphere. In the digital media society, with its abundance of cameras and social networking, death has become increasingly visible for large audiences, sometimes shockingly raw and explicit. The Last Image tries to pinpoint the significance of this phenomenon by investigating ‘last images’ that serve as farewell, tribute, protest, terror, proof, digital inheritance, horror show, wistful memory or cyber spectacle. The Last Image
Rabih Mroué – The Pixelated Revolution, exhibition at Museum Tot Zover, December 19th 2013 to June 8th 2014
www.thelastimage.nl , participatory online exhibition, December 19th 2013 to December 31st 2014
Post-Mortem – Portraits after Death, photo exhibition at Museum Tot Zover, June to December 2014
Events
Performance Rabih Mroué at Frascati (Amsterdam), January 24th and 25th 2014
Public debate at De Balie (Amsterdam), March 12th 2014
Film program at Eye (Amsterdam), May 22nd to June 4th 2014
