portrait of a memory in vhs
"Portrait of a memory in vhs" is a video sculpture that shows the image of a 12 year old girl projected through and reflected off of several different layers of surfaces. This girl is presented in the realm of abstraction: her image represents a memory, or may be an extension of the past as an idea. This "ideal" state and her pure nature is also reflected in sound: three simple musical bell tones repeat, gentle suggestions of memory...
This girl represented is from a different era, a more “analog†era– the 80s, the time of VHS video. She is presented without context but yet she seems comfortable within it. Through her actions we see that she seems content with herself and may be slightly tentative at times but her independence is still intact. We can see by the way her gaze and smile extends out of her that she is filterless– She is someone who has either not learned boundaries yet or has lived a sheltered life and has not learned to distrust strangers.
With different iterations this memory becomes distorted or less defined, each impression reflects or influences the other and each image (or memory) takes on different qualities, different textures, and begins to take a different form.
What makes people want to document their lives, obsessively updating personal artifacts, constantly looking at the past through the eyes of a collector? What sort of story emerges from those objects left behind? What makes video (especially analog video) so reflective of memory? Can the video image that represents memory actually supplant memory, colored by the characteristics of that medium (blurriness, blippiness, dull muted colors, video artifacts)? These are all issues Jose and I (Eduardo) both were interested in and wanted to explore...
Jose and I shared a similar aesthetic & interests and we both wanted to work together.
We both wanted to play with projection, blue screens, and sound and decided to take on the challenge of trying to create arresting imagery that would illustrate how a medium (VHS) can have a personality of its own and could mirror processes and moods that already happen in our minds, such as memory, nostalgia, and a desire for narrative.
