The following videos comprise my work for GEVA 410 with Babak Golkar, which I took during the Fall term of 2010. The following text is my proposal for the second piece.
Memory is the great shape-shifter in art. It exists in the abstract but is perceived through the filter of materials and technology. In the corporeal realm it is a trace, artifact or remnant of quotidian existence with a personal and often collective charge. I am increasingly interested in the fluid and mutable nature of memory and how it is used both unwittingly and purposefully in both the private and pubic spheres. My recent direction in art is to examine how personal recollections are altered, effaced and confabulated over time on a personal level, and how they are appropriated and manipulated for purposes of aestheticization and commodification publicly.
In my most recent project, Workbench Wall, I use a single-channel video projection to present a number of objects from my father’s basement workspace that he has accumulated over the past 50 years. Through dramatic lighting reminiscent of the still life painting tradition, the addition of drawings and a voice track asynchronously edited with the objects they describe, the human condition of aging is explored.
I propose to combine this piece with two new related projects that further question the nature of memory and how it is manipulated. The first one is another video projection that would be shown in a dark space adjacent to the Workbench Wall project. It will consist of 10- second cross-fading segments of selected wall objects successively drawn and erased over the course of a 3-4 minute video projected onto the gallery wall. While some objects will appear to emerge, others will fade. Concurrently, the text of the narration from Workbench Wall will surface, change and disappear in a similar manner beneath the drawings on the concrete foundation portion of the wall. There will be no audio track.
The nature of memory and our resolution with aging is fascinating in itself. Our collective memory is also topical at this point in history. The means to share photos, video and audio through social media such as Facebook and Twitter has transformed the abstraction of memories from thoughts to cyberspace. In the process they are de-contextualized and become “samples” available to anyone. Although digitizing personal memories preserves them from a private perspective, they become a permanent part of the public domain. The relationship between memory, technology and appropriation stands in contrast with the much slower physical processes of aging.