Death during post-production: the testament buries the Masters and seals the oeuvre

pivotal · 1 Apr YTSDB (2004); testament effective at death

• When: JOI dies during IJ(V?)'s post-production, 1 Apr YTSDB; the will's provisions execute at his death
• What: The oeuvre's sealing, as a deliberate last authorial gesture. The self-documenting auteur leaves no recording of himself — "w/o one of those video-recorded suicide notes," a mode by then "used only by the tasteless and trailer-park tacky" (n079) — but his testament disposes of the art: it "ordered the cartridge's burial in the brass casket w/ him," in the same instrument that willed Joelle "an absurd (and addiction-enabling) annuity" (n080). Joelle's account to Steeply generalizes the seal: "They were buried with him. The Masters of everything unreleased. At least that was in his will" — and she never saw the finished film ("I don't know that he ever even got a finished Master"). The burial is what makes the archival record permanently unresolvable (event 18's completed-vs-destroyed split, the Tête-Bêche minority report) — the Work ends by being interred with the worker. Whether and by whom the grave is later disturbed, and every question of copies and custody, belongs to the samizdat thread, cross-referenced by name only. See the JOI timeline (the death itself); the Joelle timeline (the annuity).