The Witness is a performance installation and video work exploring death awareness and acceptance, and the internet as a site for private inquiry. This creative development draws on a video work commissioned by RealTime in 2017; video and sound artist Tiyan Baker will begin a major research and performative extension to its first iteration.

The artist will work with two disparate groups: a Buddhist congregation, Adelaide-based Buddha House; and controversial online morbid content forum r/WatchPeopleDie.

The Witness draws on the Buddhist tradition of bringing ideas into physical, performative action. The artist’s process will engage these unlikely communities in conversation about how they view their roles as sites of existential investigation, cultivators of emotional resilience, and practitioners of ‘death awareness’.