Medium: 127-hour single-channel video, involuntary audience participation, signed NDAs, mandatory reflective silence.
Screening Format: 16K digital projection, no subtitles.
Runtime: 5 days, 7 hours, 12 minutes. No intermissions.
The Last Frame is Yours is not a film. It is a commitment, a test, a sentence. At 127 hours in length, the piece obliterates the notion of passive spectatorship, demanding total submission from its audience. Gallery-goers must sign a waiver before entering, acknowledging their understanding that no one is permitted to leave until the final frame has been seen.
The film’s structure is elusive: a meandering collage of unedited security footage, flickering landscapes filmed at one frame per hour, actors reading novels in languages they don’t understand with deliberate hesitation, and entire stretches of black screen where the only soundtrack is the lo-res recording of a someone filling a car with petrol. At irregular intervals, a clock appears, but it does not tell the time.
Viewers are provided with a single, numbered blanket and a deliberately uncomfortable chair. Meals are served in near silence, consisting of a thin broth and dry crackers, a menu devised in collaboration with sleep deprivation researchers. At night (though time loses meaning quickly), pre-recorded voices murmur speculative reflections on the nature of endings, though it is never clear who is speaking.
Davos insists the audience must earn the final frame. Only those who endure the full experience are granted the right to see it. What happens in the last moment remains unknown—viewers sign an NDA and are forbidden from discussing it outside the screening.
Artist Statement:
“This work is a short film that I have worked on whilst researching my magnum opus, a 300 hour feature filmed on Hampstead Heath called Fred Astaire goes to Space.”
— Davos
Curator’s Notes:
This work is the culmination of a career-long investigation into the intersection of time, endurance, and the collapse of voluntary engagement. With The Last Frame is Yours, he transcends conventional filmic expectations, creating a piece that is at once cinematic, sculptural, and carceral.
Drawing from the durational legacies of Warhol’s Empire and Douglas Gordon’s 24 Hour Psycho, but stripping away the safety of optional departure, Davos forces the viewer into a state of radical submission. The fluctuating pace—sometimes glacial, sometimes violently abrupt—mirrors the psychological erosion of captivity, though unlike most imprisonment, this is one the audience has chosen.
The final frame, withheld until total surrender, serves as both punishment and reward. Those who reach it emerge transformed, though no one can say exactly how.
Visitor Guidelines:
• Once admitted, attendees may not leave until the screening is complete.
• Bathroom breaks are allowed, but must be taken in silent, single-file procession, monitored by a gallery attendant.
• No external timekeeping devices are permitted. Phones must be left outside.
• At the end of the screening, attendees are required to sit in silent reflection for one hour before departure.
Price: £1,750,000 (includes blanket, numbered certificate of completion, and exclusive access to a single still from the final frame).
Limited Edition Prints: A series of five images from indeterminate points in the film, titled You Were Here, But When?, is available for £250,000 each.
Critics’ Reactions:
• Sally Quant: “A relentless, unforgiving masterpiece.”
• Michel Downton: “Davos has done what no filmmaker has dared: he has made time itself the antagonist.”
• The Torquay Guardian: “I lasted 84 hours before I broke and was carried to A and E on a passing window-cleaner’s ladder. I can never know what I missed. This will haunt me forever.”
The Last Frame is Yours is not a film you watch. It is a film you survive.