We visited the two floors of the School of Visual Arts MFA open studios event last weekend where Sarah Schich was projecting a small moving image onto one wall of her darkened studio. The walls were all shingled with seriously-blank sheets of white typewriter paper. Across from the “screen” and also just above the floor, lit by one dim bare bulb hanging from the ceiling, was a typed list of names pinned to the wall.
Sylvia Plath
Edgar Allen Poe
Anne Sexton
Michel Foucault
Edna St. Vincent Millay
Yukio Mishima
The little lantern relayed a looped series of six short animated videos illustrating the story of the deaths of six famous writers.
The image above is a still from the story, by the author’s own account, of the social circumstances in which Michel Foucault contracted the disease, HIV, which eventually caused his death.
I know this may sound weird and probably disrespectful, but the animations are graceful, beautiful, and absolutely charming.