Cardboard, Postcard, Photocopies

A photocopier can be said to truthful in its reproduction of an image or text but even this machine is not perfect. A postcard is photocopied and each subsequent copy photocopied and so on. The photocopier transforms the image into something that blurs foreground and background and turns small details into large – transformation occurring through its very means of mechanical reproduction, much like memory’s ability to distort and transform through recall or obsession.

Poems, Photocopies

Andalusian poets Ibn Zaydun and Princess Wallada bint al-Mustakfi became infatuated with one another, sending poems that described and emphasised their love and longing for one another. Their love from afar is captured in these pithy extracts from longer prose, however through the omission and repetition of parts of the text a conversation occurs, separated this time by physical space. These omissions are almost didactics or dedications of love and can be read almost as if they were sent through messaging applications that pervade our lives today.

Acetate film loop, Super8 projectors

A time-lapse film of the sun filtering through a curtain is captured on a super8 camera and looped through two projectors. The two projected images are separated in time by their location on the film, unable to ever syncronise.

Reel-to-reel machine, ¼ inch magnetic audiotape, ¼ tape head, preamplifier, headphone amplifier

A tape loop is fed through the machine. An auxiliary playhead picks up the sound of the tape and sends it to the inbuilt record head of the reel to reel machine. With each loop, the reel-to-reel player records itself on top of itself. A cycle of generation loss is thereby created, with the tape eventually destroying its original recording.

Taking the themes from Endless Present for wind octet, the self-destroying tape loop represents the relentless and erosive passage of time.