Memory is fast; film is slow. Lost futures and distant pasts collapse into a dyschronic state of time wounded both forwards and back. What room left is there for ghosts in the digital age? It is the burden of present consciousness to filter the oppressive weight of the past.
Memory Junction Museum is a Canadian video art show first exhibited at the Isabel Bader Centre for the Performing Arts, Kingston, ON, in July, 2023. This five channel work is predominantly concerned with memory and its discontents, exploring the ways in which our identities and personal narratives are mediated by the images which contain them. What emerges from this is not a diary, nor an autobiography, but a mnemonic landscape.
The artist wishes to thank Peggy Fussell, Colin de Grandpré, Meaghan Hymers, Hilary Jay, Gary Kibbins, Emily Koops, Cam Miller, Emily Pelstring, Andrei Pora, Jordan Richards, Emilie Surette, Megan Switzer, Jacob Szutka, and Sierrah Zawacki.
Two Hundred Memories (right, video tape, 2023)
Described as both “banal” and “moving”, this interactive sculptural work is a flicker film made up of two-hundred of the artist's own memories. Each memory has been typed up as a digital title card and lasts no more than two frames. The resultant sixteen seconds is looped to last six hours and has been dubbed to VHS tape. As the viewer is invited to pause the tape, these memories begin to break down, blur together, and fall apart as the tape is rewound, looped-back, and played again. The dyschronic state of broken time proper to the image haunted by both distant pasts and lost futures is wounded further by each pass of magnetic tape over the VCR’s inclined head drum; memories decaying at 1,800 rpm.
Other works at Memory Junction Museum include: Asymptotes (digital, 60 minutes); As it Happened (MiniDV, 120 minutes); Niagara Falls, 2023 (iPhone, 10 seconds); This World Was Never Meant for Me (16mm, 2 minutes).
All photos on this page of the July, 2023 exhibition were taken by Cameron Miller.
Click here for a short selection of clips from Memory Junction Museum