Lacrimosa

In Josef Dabernig’s films, places, interiors, nooks and crannies, as well as the spaces of memory they contain, are the main protagonists – animated matter. For Lacrimosa, this principle applies doubly. The setting of the action, which could be the reenactment of a distant childhood experience, is the attic of a villa. Initially broken down into image fragments, it points to an absence: an empty bed, empty coat hangers, relics of a world of objects that has fallen out of time. Only then do the human actors appear: hands, young and old, folded in prayer or occupied with the beads of a rosary, and the bare soles of a kneeling child. The center of the somewhat miraculous choreography of repetitive patterns (and small system errors) is a child’s coffin set on a timber frame, later to be precariously maneuvered through a narrow stairwell. To say a prayer of final farewell, accompanied by the repetitive sounds of a funeral march, a group has gathered, consisting of Dabernig’s aunt and his grandchildren, wearing smock aprons, leggings, and a batik T-shirt. Occasionally, “modern” practices, such as swiping on a cellphone, creep into the religious rituals of the funeral ceremony. And suddenly the cords of a pair of sweatpants look like the successors to the rosary beads.

The place, which is interwoven with this setting by a voiceover narration (written by Bruno Pellandini and spoken by Johanna Orsini) that never becomes entirely congruent with it, exists on a different timeline. In the detailed depiction of a house, the room appears as a breathing organism made of skin and bones. Memories of sounds, textures, a funeral, and the family home’s previous existence as a wheelwright’s workshop leave an autobiographical trace behind. Or is there perhaps an autofiction behind Lacrimosa, whose title comes from part of the Dies Irae sequence in a requiem Mass? “Can you remember? Or was it only told to you?” (Esther Buss)

Translation: John Wojtowicz