video works

Friend Part I, Video-still
Rundgang, Film-kitchen, Städelschule 2025

Friend Part I
Video 07:58 min
Lydia Belevich

This piece is composed of found footage and interviews, as well as my own video work, and AI generated footage of my friend Christopher.
Initially I wanted to explore themes of Black Metal and Isolation. While working on it it reminded me of my lost friend. The footage brought up old memories which I realized was a way for me to deal with what happened to us as friends.
Therefore, as a final product this may be looked at as a failure. Because through found footage and AI generated clips, I can never recreate him or our relationship.
While pictures and high amounts of information produce more of our cultures that we consume, it can never recreate those things that they represent. In a similar way I tried to approach this problem through this video work. It did remind me of my friend, and it did help me understand what happened to him through understanding the culture that he came from and was part of. But it did not save me from the emptiness his disappearance has created in me.
Maybe failure is not in this work. Maybe failure is in the belief that there is and should be something behind this information. The idea of a friend or a culture or a style for that matter may be in this sense simply empty. There is nothing behind the symbols that we read than what meaning we put into them. The collage that I assembled is my friendship with him, and it is
as well my culture.

Special thanks to Patrick Kokosyzynski and Maksim Belevich.