Grief Pattern

Grief Pattern utilizes appropriated film footage that is layered and sequenced in a manner that emulates the five stages of grief: denial, anger, bargaining, depression, and acceptance.  Despite the work spawning from my own experience with grief, the work does not depict a specific event in one individual’s life, but rather is a general understanding of how we deal with loss and trauma.  As cinema elicits emotional responses from viewers, regardless of whether they have experienced similar situations or not, the use of films allows viewers to place themselves in the work, ultimately creating a personal understanding of the realities of grief.  From an outside perspective, it may be quite simple to identify the five stages in a theoretical or empirical sense, but the actual experience is hardly codified when living through it, rather it feels as though the events bleed together without distinction.  As such, Grief Pattern’s use of collage allows for the structured model of grief to be recognized while presenting a visual representation of the frenzied feelings associated with the actual experience of living through it.