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TOO YOUNG TO DIE, 2010.
Documentation: September 2010, The Slade School of Fine Art, London.
Too Young to Die is an installation model that was made in 2010 during the early stages of my MFA course at The Slade School of Fine Art. It consists of a single-channel HD video, television, DVD player, round table and chairs, beer cans, plate of cigarette butts, baking soda (mock cocaine), table carving which reads “TOO YOUNG TO DIE”, wall collage: polaroid and 35 mm color photographs, hand-written notes, cards and drawings and ideally four painted walls green, purple, orange, yellow.
Too Young to Die is a re-creation and memorial of the living room of the first apartment I lived in Los Angeles after I left my childhood home. I lived in the apartment from 2006 to mid 2009. All photographs, notes and drawings on the walls of the installation were taken or made in the apartment by various people or myself during the time that I lived there. Many of the notes and photographs were also taped on the walls of the apartment throughout those years.
The time spent in that apartment, especially between 2006 and 2008, was a very dark time in my life, full of debaucheries as well as some life-threatening situations. However, it was also in this place that myself and the many visitors that frequented it began to experience our first real sense of belonging. This was the place where we grew up and the place where many of us first came into contact with the free world– the world of choice.
The recreation of this space enables the viewer to remember and revisit the freedom and consequences of youth in an immersive and participatory environment.
The video on the television acts as a kind of forecast to the future which functions as a type of live broadcast of the present. The video is composed of a series of moving portraits from my life in England in 2010.
TOO YOUNG TO DIE, 2010. Table, detail.
TOO YOUNG TO DIE, 2010. Television.
TOO YOUNG TO DIE, 2010. Table.
TOO YOUNG TO DIE, 2010. Wall Collage, purple.
TOO YOUNG TO DIE, 2010. Installation view.
TOO YOUNG TO DIE, 2010. Wall Collage, green.