Statement

A spectacle of life not remembered but of life forgotten; like dream images, these cinematic fragments are hieroglyphic clues to a past illuminated at the very moment of its disappearance. – Walter Benjamin

In order to forever remember, memory is often objectified - monuments are built to counter our collective amnesia, personal histories are documented, fleeting moments are recorded and preserved, experiences are concretely catalogued as known. When we rely on these presentations of permanence to fabricate our memory, we relieve ourselves from the act of remembering, consequently enabling the process of forgetting.

My work examines this spectacle of life forgotten – the slippery territory surrounding the object of memory. Appropriating my parents' dusty archive of snapshots and photographic negatives, I privately adopt their collection of meaningful moments. While having little or no personal experience of these moments, I indirectly endure the consequences of them. These inverted veiled traces act in a filmic manner, artificially resurrecting the fragmented dead, however impossible it may be. In this elegiac atmosphere, the fleeting attempt to revitalize what has been lost only highlights the inability to do so.

Cultivating memory illuminates a serious responsibility – memories cannot only be kept, they must be nurtured or forgotten.


– Curtis Erlinger