The Weeping Saint Pity

 The Weeping Saint Pity

'The Weeping Saint Pity' is a 3D animated work made in 3D software (non-generative non promptive), with a 9.34 minute duration with a musical score composed of church organs and classical choir weaved with everyday sounds of our lives such as Netflix, grocery tills and washing machines.

'The Weeping Saint Pity' explores the ideas of the individual's everyday slights, minor despairs, inadequacies and jealousies of the individual in the western middle class life. Gore Vidal famously said, "Whenever a friend succeeds, a little something in me dies."

With this stark maxim as a pivot for our exploration we investigate how individuals in the westernized European plateau seeks self maximization, indulges in constant comparative misery and hyper focus on 'winning' life. Even though our lives, as we guiltily know, are luxurious and easy compared to most people living in the world. And yet we still can't shake that pesky late night panic, embarrassment and malaise. Life will never be as thrilling as the content we watch teases. Therapy has not cured all the 'mother wounds'. We never reach the goals in techno—capitalist culture as they are merely mirage.

These ideas lead us to ponder a certain secular religiosity we live in. Where still seek cleansing, an ending, and most often a blessing but without the help of god. As Mathea Slättholm Sagdahl argues in her philosophical research, 'Melancholy as Responding to Reasons', "With respect to the value and rationality of melancholy.... I argue that human existence is such as to give us standing pro tanto reasons for melancholy by being an appropriate response to reality and value.'

Behind these embarrassing 'failures' there disguises a fundamental core or what makes a human. Though grotesque, a sad beauty exists in our instincts of never ending competition, betterment and yearning.

'The Weeping Saint Pity' as a work includes a 3D video work as well as light and music installation made by over a three month period at the end of 2023. Katherine Mills Rymer makes all visual art work and vocal musical output while Jens Bjornkjaer plays all instruments and composes all musical aspects of the collective.

The artwork was made in collaboration with the Danish Art Foundation (Statens Kunstfund) and was commissioned by the Nikolaj Kunsthal Museum in Copenhagen as one of two original works to be exhibited and premiered at the multi-disciplinary group exhibition 'SUPER HIGH END UNDERGROUND' running from from February 9 to July 28. 2024, curated by Rebekka Elisabeth Anker-Møller and chief curator of Nikolai Kunsthal Helene Nyborg Bay.