Rewind, 2020
Video, 18.48 minutes
In collaboration with
Remco van Elsacker
“All I need to do is to go back one step in time and overwrite. I am looking hard for a modus that will allow me to jump back ten seconds so I can avoid the mistake. I mentally press alt-ctrl-del to undo the most recent activity. It’s a wrong exit, time-wise. Time freezes, hypothetically, and I step outside of myself. I look and point at the danger, 'watch out'. But the mill only turns one way, 8000 rpm.”
At the fatal moment in which my partner lost two fingers, for a fraction of a second, his mind made him believe that he could simply step back in time and undo the damage. By flashing back to his earlier life through pictures, slowly moving towards the present, he ruminates on this conviction by undoing damage with surgical precision. While the undoing of damage through rewinding time remains but a digital fantasy, the in reality contra-productive action acknowledges the physical change as irreversible.