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This video uses the special effect “Matte Painting.” The filmic illusion, carefully constructed by the use of this old-fashioned technique of painting on glass, is broken in the last scene. The painted fore-, and background become the setting for a theme that is eternal: the fight between “the poor” and “the rich.” The double role in this video was inspired by the so-called women’s movie (ref. A Woman’s View, How Hollywood Spoke to Women, 1930–1960, Jeanine Basinger, New York 1993), a genre that became popular in the USA in the depression years of the 1930s. Using two opposite female roles it thematised a paradox: how women could or maybe would like to be and how they were supposed to be. Designed to reinforce a traditional moral standard for women in a fast modernizing society, at the end of the movies the poor, married, serving woman was presented as the ideal role model over the rich, unmarried, independent woman. The song in the video is sung by the Appalachian folk hero and proto-feminist Sara Ogan Gunning (1910–1983) who wrote songs about poverty, starvation, the repression of labor by capital, as well as the tragedies of her own life to encourage the region’s coal miners to fight for better working and living conditions. In the few recordings that are known, she always sings a cappella.

Source
Song: Oh Death, Sarah Ogan Gunning (from: Girl of Constant Sorrow, Folk-Legacy Records, 1965)

This work has been shown at
Any Day Now, Lentos Kunstmuseum, Linz, 2011
Any Day Now, Kunsthalle Nürnberg, 2010
Mathilde ter Heijne, Videoart at Midnight, Kino Babylon, Berlin, 2010
Mathilde ter Heijne, Susanne Vielmetter Los Angeles Projects, Los Angeles, 2007
Talking Pictures – Theatralität in zeitgenössischen Film – und Video, K21, Düsseldorf, 2007
No Depression in Heaven, Galerie Arndt & Partner, Berlin, 2006

Song Lyrics
Oh Death, Sarah Ogan Gunning

What is this, that I can see,
with icy hands taking hold of me
I am dead and none can tell
I open the door to heaven and hell

Oh death, oh death,
please spare me over till another year

Death, oh death, consider my age
Please, don’t take me in this stage
My wealth is all at your command
If you would move your icy hands

Oh death, oh death,
Please spare me over till another year

No wealth, no land, no silver, nor gold,
nothing satisfies me but your soul

Oh death, oh death,
please spare me over till another year

Death, oh death, please let me see,
if Christ did turn is back on me
God’s children prayed, his preachers preached
The time of hope is out of reach

Oh death, oh death,
please spare me over till another year

(From: Girl of Constant Sorrow, Folk-Legacy Records, 1965)