DVD + booklet
scope: design
client: Errant Bodies Records, Berlin / Los Angeles
»Death Travels Backwards« documents Elggren’s ongoing engagement and use of video. Cataloguing a collection of works from 1999 to the present, »Death Travels Backwards« delivers an important overview of the artist’s pursuit of the hidden secrets and spectral enigmas found within the everyday. What marks Elggren’s video works is an understanding of how image and sound work together to infuse the electronic material with an element of the uncanny, and to supply the imagination of the viewer with a glimpse onto infinity
Active since the late 1970s, Leif Elggren is one of the most constantly surprising and mysterious conceptual artists to work in the combined fields of audio and video. A writer, visual artist, stage performer and composer, he has numerous audio releases to his credit, working individually and also with the Sons of God (along with Kent Tankred). His music, often conceived as the soundtrack to visual installations or experimental stage performances, presents carefully selected sound sources over a long stretch of time and can range from mesmerizingly quiet electronics to harsh noise. His wide-ranging and investigative body of work consistently involves dreams and mysterious narratives, often inverting social hierarchies to ultimately subvert the real with poetical matter.