In White and Rolandas Rastauskas’s video play Clinic (1996), the colour white signifies both illness and death. In the latter, which Valdas and I worked on as set designers, the action takes place in a pool: the white pool tiles and white-clad actors are stand-ins for a hospital, its patients, and staff. In this case, white does not mean cleanliness. Instead, it is a space that has been cleansed of the excess noise of life.

In White, we observe a static shot: a woman, exhausted and no longer young, in a white environment, herself also dressed in white. Unlike in the play, there is little to no action, only anticipation and stillness. However, the image is not static: the woman is breathing, sometimes picking up a cup and drinking, or shifting in her seat to stay comfortable as she waits. Her movements are minimal, aimless and effortless, as if governed by the flow of time itself. Her waiting is not related to a specific event; it has no object. There is nothing to anticipate. It is not about waiting for something, but about being in a state of waiting. In a Heideggerian sense, it is being in time where the future is no longer promised, and the present no longer needs to be populated with action. The woman is not trying to rush the passage of time nor seeking meaning beyond the waiting: she exists in waiting. She waits. So does the viewer. The image does not lead to a culmination because there is no narrative – only existence in the presence of death itself. Not dramatised, not heroic, but quiet and free of illusions.

Is waiting for the rain different from waiting for death?

– Aida Čeponytė

Artists: Aida Čeponytė, Valdas Ozarinskas

Video duration: 123 min

Exhibited in Twilight at the Contemporary Art Centre, Vilnius,1998 

Video