Simulacrum I: the time of the memory
is developed from a set of photographs, in the awakening of time passing and, in the eagerness, to save and preserve memories and moments while these happened and left. The clock attached to each photo that randomly reloads and is shown to the user goes back when the individual is watching at it, and it moves forward once the photo changes on the screen and the user is no longer seen it. Each photo has its clock. The photos were taken over the years of 2014 - 2016, they were developed, copied, and then registered via digital photo, so then it could materially become virtual scenes unable to be touched, just like memory and remembrance. This work has its origin in the exact moment of loss and absence, when the moment in which realized that there are no more memories to create further, but only holding on and remember over and over the ones that already were created and existed, arises.
For the artist, memory can be understood as a mental state that involves the awareness of temporal becoming. When we remember we recreate here and now the outstanding characteristics of an event or experience, maybe past information: it is a characterization of events and not a duplication of events. The past is represented in the current present, and in this process is giving both – past and present – a new significance. Are hearing, seeing, writing reading and talking, valid ways of knowing and making known, and in turn, fighting a fight against oblivion and death? This intention puts the work of the future into the past, and forgetfulness allows the re-creation of the past. It is the present and the future that determine the past. It is a transformative process of memory in which intentionality and inner time prevail. The duplicity which characterizes the temporary configuration of this work corresponds to this peculiar behavior of memory. It is not a vacuum of time, but a void of individual memory, filled by the collective re-enactment of memory, which knows no succession but selection and recurrence. After all, the more public and collective the personal – affective memory becomes, the closer to the remembrance we will be, and we will have won the battle against oblivion and death.