DEATH & DATA / Wave 3 - December

Temp. files Season 4 wave 3 is live! December 1st marks the release of the final round of works engaging with the theme Death & Data.

This work captures the movement of light in an intimate space, implying an interiority of perception and a transformation. Filmed during two different time frames, the video is a meditation on grief, memory and passing. The work is a dedication to the artist’s mother, Lili Tai Cheung

This collection of short videos prompts viewers to engage with the absurdity of life, the enigmatic nature of death and the meaning beyond routine and the distractions of living. Stemming from my recent videos exploring the grief response, this work offers an apparatus for approaching the uncertain inevitable with humor and humility.

Alongside Leigh’s video, read On-Off, & Interruptions: An Interview with Leigh Davis and emily brandt In this conversation, Leigh and returning Temp.Files artist emily brandt discuss karaoke, disrupted expectations, the air element, and moments before moments, as they relate to Davis’ body of work and this new video, in particular.

Prompt Technofetishism (2025) weaves together interviews, panels, and performances that meditate on the tensions between high-tech and ancestral technologies. This video begins with the opening question to the panel and interviewees: “Is the vision of the future anchored in colonial, Eurocentric, and Western fetishism of progress and technology?” The video then pairs Rah and her grandmother, each performing a Zoroastrian purification ritual to ward off the evil eye.

Rah’s grandmother uses an incense burner and stove to generate smoke, while Rah uses a cellphone to create a digital simulation of fire and smoke, performing the same ritual. This juxtaposition resists the “primitivist” framing often imposed on ancestral practices, collapsing the hierarchy between tradition and modernity by pairing technologies like cameras, digital effects, and Zoom with oral tradition and ancient rituals.

through January 26 / Western Michigan University

We’re misled by the momentary span of each individual life, and by technology’s attempt to reduce and define us. We live in conditions actively trying to annihilate populations, and rightly, we protest and resist, and we grieve from our depths. Death inspires fear and awe and heartbreak. It’s the most primal opening into a wildly unknowable place. The data of life, its scents of flesh and blood, and death, are encoded in and created by our bodies, experiences, and technologies. This data pulls us both toward an unknowable future and our most primal ancestral past, with its ancient taboos and drives. Our ephemeral bodies create, carry, filter, and interpret all knowable data, objects, time-codes and thought-forms. Data points us toward historic relics, impressions left by the dead, coded into hard drives, digital records, and the ever-expanding web. What is this afterbody, and how does it soften into the noise of all that is?

Season 4 artists include:

Emily Brandt (Oct)
Eva Davidova (Oct)
Jillian McDonald (Oct)

We are thrilled to welcome new members Eva Davidova and Leigh Davis this season!

temp.files (aka Temporary Files) is a video publishing cooperative, online publication, streaming site, and remote residency. We are an expanding and rotating group of artists working between text, social engagement, performance and media, committed to supporting each other in the process of creating new, experimental work.