Delali Cofie

A Sleep Away, A Sleep Within

16mm experimental film, 1min

“This piece considers a constructed archive as it’s point of departure. Exploring what remains after an archive is “no more”, in an unending dialogue between what was and what is left. Through a process of reticulation, 16mm footage of a performer at rest wearing a textile sculpture, is boiled with shreds of the sculpture itself. The garment, made of found fabrics, old family clothes, and dyed raffia is meant to represent the sense and weight of self as an archive of personal history. Hence the boiling process creates a final self-reflexive piece of film that has been degraded by its own history. The result is an immersive parallel between rest and liminality, scored with a recording of a funeral procession in my native language Ewe, which sets the scene of “rest” on its departure into degradation. This cycle between organic and chemistry, leaves traces of ghost images that we pass by as we fall further into a degradation that feels as expansive as space.”