ILLNESS AS METAPHOR
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We are excited to present Iain Douglas’ first machinima, i didn’t get to kiss you goodbye (2021), which was originally featured in an outstanding curated program by British artist David Blandy for The One Minutes entitled Fields of Algorithms. This was a pivotal moment for Douglas. As he recently stated, “I’ve been completely absorbed by [the medium machinima] ever since.”
Shot with/in Grand Theft Auto V, the machinima captures the tragedy of dementia using blurriness as a metaphor for cognitive decay (see Gaspar Noé’s use of the “fade into white” effect in his most recent film, Vortex, also about mental impairment). Here, the camera shows an elderly woman in a parking lot under a torrential rain, zooming in on her although the image does not get any clearer. Soaked in her trench coat, she just stands there, motionless. The video is accompanied by a series of captions composing both a poetic diagnosis and a warning:
There’s a collective blanket descending over us
It proffers warmth and comfort and absence of light
We let it cover us and hide from whatever scared us
Underneath it we can forget everything
As each of us forgets, posterity diminishes
Eventually there is nothing but the darkness and we vanish
In the accompanying text, Douglas wrote:…
Matteo Bittanti
Iain Douglas, i didn’t get to kiss you goodbye, digital video/machinima, color, sound, 59”, United Kingdom, 2021
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