"Um this photograph, I found hidden behind some other photographs at my grandparents house. It was from 1993, my sister's third birthday . It was taken at the fellowship in Soldoltna, Alaska. Um. She. There is three people and the top of a person's head, my step father is holding up a puppy. Um, to my sister. She is looking at it straight in the eyes sort of, reluctant. Um theres a table cloth on the table that has cats, cartoon cats floating on a pink and white polka-dotted background. Um, whenever it was somebody's birthday, they got to choose um what food was served that night and of course there was some kind of cake or desert and the family of the person whose birthday it was would decorate the living-the dining room. Um there was pink balloons tied on the birthday chair which was set on the head of the table. Um a seat usually occupied by Wayne or Scott or some other man, in the house that was prominent but the birthday chair had balloons, pink balloons stuck onto the top and fanning out over her as she sits sort of leaning toward one side away from the puppy. Um so theres two chairs on either side of her and in one chair sits my stepdad holding the puppy out to her but on the other side is a little kid, and I don't remember his name. He is wearing a T-shirt that says Alaska and it looks like he is sitting half in the chair. Um usually when it was somebodies birthday, the other kids would gather around that chair and sort of look over their shoulder and egg them on as they are opening presents and it was really the only time that any attention was diverted towards one person, you know like, the birthday person. Um. The photograph is three by four, film."
SHIMMER_SPACE/STUTTER_PLACE
"No matter which scene a person remembers, they all mean something that is relevant to him or her without his or her necessarily knowing what they mean. Memories are retained because of their significance for that person. Thus they are organized according to a principle that is essentially different from the organizing principle of photography. Photography grasps what is given as a spatial (or temporal) continuum; memory-images retain what is given only insofar as it has significance. Since what is significant is not reducible to either merely spatial or merely temporal terms, memory-images are at odds with photographic representation. "
Siegfried Kracauer, Photography 1927
Our brain is physically changed by the fragments of perceptible events that seep into it. The act of remembering is actually a physical act of re-creation.
While this project is directly dealing with memory, the root of these memories is a specific place. It is a habituation that stutters within the larger paradigm of life in our place, in our time. A place in which the individual and autonomous life that is seen as typical, is replaced with a mode that is largely atypical. This mode of life could possibly open up spaces in which to resist the seemingly inevitable development of passivity, isolation, and alienation.
I'l post installation shots soon
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