Aschenbach II (Visconti and Paluzzi)

11in x 14in | Pigment ink on transparency | Edition of 3 + 1 AP
Edition 1-3: Available
AP: Artist collection | Currently on display at OAG

These works are companion pieces to the artist’s installation Death in Venice. The artist places himself not only in the iconic death pose of Aschenbach at the end of Thomas Mann’s novella “Death in Venice” but also in a position between the original author, the director of the film adaptation Luchino Visconti, and the librettist of the opera adaptation Benjamin Britten.

Death in Venice is a site-specific installation that situates the artist’s queer body at the centre of various translations and adaptations of Thomas Mann’s queer-coded novella “Death in Venice” (1912).

Surrounding the room are floor-to-ceiling hand-dyed grey drapes, while in the centre of the room are two 4 x 8-foot plexi-glass sheets supported in metal frames. The plexi-sheets are illuminated with back projection, and this is the only light in the gallery. Two projected videos loop continuously throughout the day: the horizontal video projection is a selection of frames from the ending of Luchino Visconti’s Death in Venice (1971) and the vertical video projection is a deep-fake video of my facial movements that have been merged with the Aschenbach character’s face from Visconti’s film. The former video is silent, except for a slow and melodic version of Mahler’s fifth symphony, which was featured prominently in Visconti’s film; the second video, however, is a series of short speeches, which contains texts from various translations and adaptations of Death in Venice – from Mann’s novella to Visconti’s film, to Britten’s opera, and several quotes which academics claim inspired the original novel.