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Do You Know Me? is an oil paint-on-glass stop motion animation of 44 posthumous portraits of unclaimed and unknown deceased persons. The project began as response to the International Committee of the Red Cross’s (ICRC) “Missing and Deceased Migrant Project”. The project has a formal association with the ICRC’s initiative, which is a humanitarian effort to identify the many unidentified and undocumented deceased who die in South Africa everyday - most of whom are assumed irregular migrants. The related creative project responds to images of unclaimed deceased and in its association with the ICRC importantly highlights a very real tragedy underlying illegal immigration in South Africa. This subject (and tragedy) is part of the global phenomenon of illegal immigration. The bulk of the portraits are responses to forensic photographs of unclaimed and unknown deceased provided by the Johannesburg Forensic Services forensic (JPS) photographer Tracy Reindorp. Some of the portraits are responses to forensic images of unidentified unclaimed deceased (unknown bodies.org). Gate keepers' permission to obtain access to photographs and to use them for this creative project was provided by the JPS and the University of the Witwatersrand. I can provide a copy of this letter, if needed. My interest in the ICRC initiative and decision to respond to the crisis in a creative project stemmed from an unsuccessful search by my own family for a relative who has been missing for decades. 

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 A key challenge at the start of this project was how to create a cycle of movement from the still image (or portrait) into motion and back to the still image (the next portrait). The aim was to imbue each frozen portrait with life without imposing and inventing life-like movement but remaining true to the original still. The way I have approached this in the animation is to use a painterly metamorphosis to move from one still to the next. This simultaneously and reflexively refers to the essential nature of medium of animation – to give an appearance of movement or an illusion of life. The aim of suggesting movement through metamorphosis, while a technical process, also becomes a conceptual construct in that the illusion of movement it gives becomes an attempt to symbolically re-enliven each portrait.  The pivot from stillness to movement and the appearance of death to life with the animated portraits is an attempt to reinstate the status from corpse to human being, and the status of the individual who was recently alive. 

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While the subject of representing the dead is foundational to art making throughout history, it does not go without ethical concerns. In this respect, this animation is created with an acute awareness that representing the dead brings into tension the obligation to the corpse, and the desire to commemorate, to secure and hold on to a trace. To engage with this tension, the portraits are not accurate portrayals of each individual and each portrait is visible for a split second only before metamorphosizing into the next.  The point is not to gloss over the tragedy – but to present the animation in a way that is visually accessible. The aim is to give the viewer pause for reflection rather than to induce in the viewer the instinct to reject the imagery or to turn away in horror. 

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The animation is part of a larger body of ongoing work for a planned exhibition project around the theme of posthumous portraiture.

 

This animation is conceived to be presented as a looped sequence on a screen or as a projection within an exhibition space. This is also a recommendation for this submission. I have added beginning and end credits for the submission, but if accepted I would add a 3 - 4  minute loop of the sequence between title credits.

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I have submitted the video in 16:9 format, as this is the standard. If necessary it can be screened in this format. However, it would be preferable if the video could be projected or shown on a digital display screen on 9:16 format. This would allow a portrait scale and the images will full the screen – as below.  

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