Installation view in Enact, Gothenburg's Konsthall, 2016
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I stumbled upon you accidentally, you took me by surprise, evoking a curiosity in me, that drew me to you. I explored you. I navigated your terrain, your hazards. The details you tried to conceal…
I found them.
Why were they concealed? Was it deliberate?
I discovered unexpected things within you. I accepted them, embraced them.
You seemed out of place, out of context… I felt like you had been forgotten, and I was there to remember you. Or maybe you wanted to be forgotten. Left to breathe, to grow.
I wished for you to grow further, and to root yourself within me so I could also remain. Here, with you, with this city. You said nothing. Remained silent. You let the wind through your trees and the bird’s songs speak for you. Through you. You had no voice so instead used theirs…
I couldn’t help but feel I was trespassing. Perhaps someone had already made claim to you and this was in fact an intrusion. So I tread lightly not to disturb you. I made my way across you with gentle movement and care. I left traces of myself for you. Did you notice? I saw the traces of others before me. I found them everywhere I went. Some were obvious. But most made little sense to me. I created fictions in my head about the time you spent together. I obsessed over them.
You were living! And others had lived within you. I wanted to know who they were. What were you to them? A host, a shelter, a refuge?
I came to understand I would never really know.
I would never truly know you.
I had to leave and in my absence your history, your story, your existence, became lost to me.
And now they are lost to you.
You’re gone and I’m afraid the time we spent together will slip away from me too. What has taken your place clouds my memory of what you were.
- Transcription of sound installation for Enact, Gothenburg Konsthall.
Photography has been described as having a cryogenic power to preserve objects through time without decay. Although it is true that the medium can be utilised to preserve and record, when attempting to do so myself I feel as if something is missing. Perhaps more stimulus is needed in order to trigger memory retention. Tactility, sight and sound can serve together as further remedies for forgetting.
This is explored in my sound and lightbox installation – The Nature of Memory 2016, the negatives themselves are given priority and treated as objects alongside a monologue addressing the site that features in the images. The installation pushes away from conventional methods of photographic presentation. By forcing these materials into unconventional conditions, they can be regarded as physical metaphors for the decaying nature of memory.
Örgryte Torp, Gothenburg, was a seemingly forgotten demolition site, reclaimed by nature years before I stumbled upon it. I saw it as a buffer zone between a forest and heavily developed housing area. I spent a lot of time there during my first visit to Sweden in the autumn of 2010, exploring its intricacies and fragments of untold stories. It was a source of inspiration for me at a time where I was questioning many aspects of myself and my practise.
Upon returning to Sweden in the Autumn of 2013 I decided to revisit the space. It had now changed, construction for new homes had begun and the first fences restricting my access were being erected. I choose to see it now with a nostalgic eye - a coping method, a means to manage my feelings towards a space that is now lost to me. What it has now become clouds my memory of what it was, and what it had been to me. I am searching for closure, a way to say goodbye to something that is already gone. A final interaction – to wrest the few scraps that remain.
For the duration of a year, a series of four exposed and developed colour negative film rolls were buried and unearthed on each of the four seasonal shifts. The negatives documented the natural and man-made changes of the space through the transitions of the seasons within the image and directly onto the emulsions surface. They hold direct traces of the space itself, eating away at the emulsion and decaying the images. Allowing the space to also make a mark on the work is a form of collaboration – inviting nature to again, in some way, reclaim the space, through the disruption of the image. This work, although photographic, invites deterioration rather than preservation.