SIMON COOLS FIERLAFIJN // DIRECTOR - Frederik Heyman

frederik Heyman - The Scent Remains

??? - Digital, Color, 4/3, BE, 2024, 3'

Artist and director Frederik Heyman merges his digitally constructed universes with the physical performance practice of Milou Van Duijnhoven for the experimental short film, The Scent Remains. Moving between non-linear emotional states, the film unfolds as a hybrid mourning ritual set inside a black, timeless void – navigating fragments of memory trapped in repetition and transformation.

As an attempt to make grief experiential rather than explanatory, The Scent Remains observes the memory as an unstable landscape, travelling across interconnected arenas: The End, The Loop, and The Beginning. Building on digital techniques that rooted past collaborations with artists from Beyoncé, to Arca, and (LA)Horde, Heyman lets green-screen environments, duplication of the performer, and distortion of reality function as emotional architecture – using digital relics as a sensory layer through which grief is guided, misled, and processed.