INEZ: But, you crazy creature, what do you think you're doing? You know quite well I'm dead.
ESTELLE: Dead?
INEZ: Dead! Dead! Dead! Knives, poison, ropes--useless. It has happened already, do you understand? Once and for all. So here we are, forever.
ESTELLE: Forever. My God, how funny! Forever.
GARCIN: For ever, and ever, and ever.
(A long silence.)
GARCIN: Well, well, let's get on with it...
by James Hansen
Over the image of a fire burning blue, we hear the faint, exhausted whisper of a middle-aged woman. “There was a fire in the cabin. I tried to leave, but the door was locked. I died in that fire...” The woman sits in a hospital bed. Her head slightly tilted, she gazes into the distance with a look of despair. “I don’t know who I am.” These sounds and images serve as the prelude of Michael Robinson’s new video The Dark, Krystle. They establish the work’s central premise, that of being trapped in a place with no hope of escape. And yet, the narrator doesn’t die, despite stating her condition as being dead, as no longer knowing herself. She is alive, born new even, but lacks an awareness of herself, of her life, of her history.
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