Lethe: An Ominous Drift, 2018
Video installation, 60 minutes
Concept & Direction: Lotte Hardeman.
Editing with: Leslie Lawrence & David Haack Monberg.
Sound design with: Kyrck [Dinos Salabis].

Lethe depicts a metallic non-scaled world in the manner of a continuous panning movement across its surface as if a painting were scanned. Lethe takes its title from the eponymous mythological river which acts as a stream of thought. According to the old greek the dead drank from its water to become oblivious to their earthly life and begin their afterlife journey with a clean slate.

In the film, the camera adopts a bird eye view, which lacks a horizon or a sky. It doesn’t recede either into infinite distance and keeps on panning steadily. The sound responds to the fabricated reality to enhance its absurd and abstract character moving between the overwhelming and the gentle. Softly relentless and slightly soporific, Lethe presents itself as a recipe for subjective annihilation in the face of life’s difficulties.