Please Don’t Cry

Please Don’t Cry, 2023, single channel video no sound, 34min.

In Please Don’t Cry, 2023, Heaney deals with the quantum dimension of grief.  A very intimate work, she filmed herself crying while thinking about her sister’s death. 

Please Don’t Cry uses Heaney’s generative quantum video editing technique which layers multiple videos at once in quantum wave-like patterns, creating a multiverse of possibilities, exploring emotionality, trauma, animality and shadow-self.

The result is a blurred, blinking, teary eye that loses its fixity and sometimes morphs into new shapes evocative of labia. The video reflects on deep and personal feelings of loss to think universally about how trauma and emotions are held within the body. 

The vulvic forms that emerge haphazardly as the video unfolds allude to the socio-historical conception of emotions and hysteria as a feminine weakness.

The title of the work, Please Dont Cry, is a line from Whitney Housten’s I Will Always Love You, which Heaney played at her sister’s funeral, as well as reflecting the negative attitudes in her family around showing overt displays of emotion.

The duration of the work – 34mins – refers to the length of her sisters life – 34 years.