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The Agonal Phase

Jennifer Montgomery

2010 00:44:00 United StatesEnglishStereo16:9HD video

Description

In the aftermath of a death things may seem very quiet, but there are struggles going on so deep not even those who struggle can recognize them.  This film looks and listens for signs of those struggles.  Psychoanalytic interjections consider the nature of time and rumination, and are used to step outside of the terribly interiorized state of mourning.

-- Jennifer Montgomery

"The agonal phase: the visible events that take place when life is in the act of extricating itself from protoplasm too compromised to sustain it any longer.  They are like some violent outbursts of protest arising deep in the primitive unconscious raging against the too-hasty departure of the spirit; no matter its preparation by even months of antecedent illness, the body often is reluctant to agree to the divorce."

-- Sherwin Nuland, How we Die

Note: This title is intended by the artist to be viewed in High Definition. While DVD format is available to enable accessibility, VDB recommends presentation on Blu-ray or HD digital file.

About Jennifer Montgomery

Jennifer Montgomery's film and video titles include Threads of Belonging (2003), Transitional Objects (2000), Troika (1998), Art For Teachers of Children (1995), Age 12: Love With a Little L (1990), and Home Avenue (1989).

Her work has been screened internationally at festivals such as Toronto, New Directors New Films (MoMA), San Francisco, Rotterdam, Thessaloniki, Rimini, Edinburgh, and Melbourne. It has also screened at museums such as the Whitney (NYC), the ICA (London), the Museum of Modern Art (NYC), the Walker Arts Center (Minneapolis), and the Pasadena Arts Center, and has had theatrical distribution in American and European repertory theaters. She has received grants from the Guggenheim Foundation, the Jerome Foundation, Art Matters, the New York State Council on the Arts, the Wisconsin Arts Board, and received a Mary L. Nohl Fellowship from the Greater Milwaukee Foundation in 2005.  Emanating from the East Coast, she now lives in Chicago.