I Was Dead (2009)

It's just what mainstream audiences were crying out for, another one of my art shorts! I'm joking of course. As pretentious as the title may sound, I'm not really making any sweeping claims or revelations about my own mortality other than the fact that, like everyone else, I will eventually die.

My death, as you likely assumed was the focus in I Was Dead, felt like a captivating subject for a new art short mainly because of how pointless it seems for me to think about it right now. Being so enamored with getting my life started is far more relevant, and clearly more uplifting then worrying about checking out.

Still, I think we all wonder how we'll be viewed when we're gone, and I became intrigued with the idea of what someone might say if they were visiting my tombstone. Will anyone even visit? What day of the week will I die on? Would this blog post seem more meaningful somehow? The concept of the short was based on the illusion of visiting my own grave site - trying to imagine how I'd reflect on my life and comprehend not existing anymore if it were actually possible to be there after I'd passed.

Last year I had shot a bunch of random footage on my little Samsung cam in the hopes of using some of it for my split screen experiments. Until now nothing ever came of this graveyard footage, but I remembered how beautiful some of it was and thought it would make a nice edit. The 'Fandrich' tombstone is my Grandpas, but seriously thinking of it as my own felt incredibly unnerving.

I Was Dead is an eerie but poignant personal edit, that in my view, presents a stark view of individual mortality and our craving to understand it. We'll all be gone at some point, but to what degree does that mean the end? How will you be remembered?