The installation ‘The Luxury of Choosing Pain’ consists of a 3D-animated film and a series of sculptural objects that explore the relationship between being an image, being a being and being a body. 

In the film, we follow a camera’s gaze as it hovers around an area populated by virtual characters: in one scene, we encounter a cyborg statue with a glass eye, the glass eye being modelled on a specific kind of glass eye manufactured for the French war veterans called Gueules Cassées, the broken faces, after the end of the first world war. In another scene we are presented with plants, who use flute sounds as their primary way of communication. The flute play, produced in collaboration with flutist Johanne Buus Andersen, forms the central element of the soundscape of the film, and acts as an auditory thread across the various scenarios presented by the film. 

Through references to historical phenomena and by engaging with what characterises the organic and the synthetic beings respectively, Gjerding asks a number of questions about the non-human gaze and the haunting, or animism, related to virtual existences.