Madeline Gins

Life Extended continues Bigert & Bergström’s exploration of the human endeavor to control life and death. In the film, we meet the gerontologist who believes we will be immortal within a near future, the architects who constructs spaces to slow down the aging process, the monk who runs for 1,000 days in order to strengthen his spirit for its immortal journey, the street kids who lives in the moment, and many more. “Today aging is subject to control,” as one biochemist puts it. And the speed with which this biotechnological development is moving indicates that coming generations will live very long lives. Opposing the static image of the stairway of life, the film is constructed as a relay race where people move towards the viewer. Initiated as a work of art, the film envisions a contemporary memento mori for death itself, when death has become nothing but a memory.

Why Not is hypnotic, compulsive and claustrophobic. It is bathed in a cold, pervasive eroticism, which, oblique and displaced at first, finally becomes explicit in one of the most bizarre masturbation sequences ever filmed. For almost two hours, we observe a young, strikingly pretty girl, nude most of the time and alone in an apartment, engaged in a sonambulistic and sensuous attempt at coming to terms with herself.