Fantôme is a device that prints images in water of the dead. An inkjet printer inscribes images directly onto the surface of the water, which flow into the lower tank. These pictures of the deceased dissolve, and the water in the tank is then filtered and purified for the next printing, enacting a process of renewal or reincarnation. By uploading images to the work’s website, anyone around the world can participate in this project.
While Fantôme references various water-related rituals connected to life and death in both Eastern and Western traditions, it also engages the issue of image rights in the age of AI, and gestures toward the relationship between sculpture and photography. Expressing the slow dissolution of the memory of the dead after their physical demise, the work suggests that not only life but also its record is fleeting. Yet this ephemerality can also be interpreted more positively: the liberation of the image from its material support might also reflect the freedom, in death, of the soul from the body.
