The Martyrs
This was hard to find, smaller than expected - and one of the screens wasn't working.
For me, size was an issue as I am familiar with the power of life-size figures in BV's videos.
My reading of the work was that the figures were dead, martyred as the title said, and that they were undergoing a process of purification through one of the four elements in order to 'ascend into heaven'; each eventually faced upwards and became bathed in silver life, an expression of surrender and bliss on their faces. So I was aware of two invisibilities - the torture they had been through and the heaven they were heading towards.
BV's explanation was somewhat different: that each video began at a point of pause in their suffering when an element began to disturb their stillness; the elements are metaphors for 'the darkest hour of the martyr's passage through darkness into light'. He describes a martyr as a witness (to their truth?) with a capacity to bear pain and death in order to remain faithful to their beliefs.
The videos in characteristic slo-mo which invites contemplation - in tension with the need to flit visually between screens to check whether something new is starting to happen. The inwardness of the actors' expressions also connected me to my own inner world; having suffered immensely, they were now going through something completely mysterious - the bardo of dying. Presumably still more powerful if you belong to a faith that honours martyrdom.
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