Memory Traces

The self is constantly in search of structures that will help it make sense of lived experience. This solitary universe (the self) becomes studded by the lights of the narrative hypothesis that words and images provide. These words and images, by and large, come to us from the deep recesses of the past. What else is the present if not a multi-layered structure made up of memory as well as intention and imagination. If memory is what connects us to that past, then tracing it is the road map that brings us to the original source, to its inception. Accordingly, every present moment is steeped in all that has ever taken place in one’s life. Remembering, recollecting, retaining, that which has already taken place - but hasn’t been forgotten. Thus all time is in the present tense affecting and inflecting the various layers that make up what we call life or reality or “now”. No one is ever in one place or one time or one mode. This kind of uniqueness belongs to life forms that lack memory, imagination, inspiration, metaphysical passion. Conscious beings carry a lot of places and faces and traces and times and signs and sighs within them - any given moment. All these become the horizon of the voyage, and the weary traveler, faithful to that which makes her, returns… So the city, the building, the port, the dawn, the corner of the street, the beggar or the pier, the morning smell escaping from the bakery, the silence, the noise, the snow, the light, the physical, the sensory as well as the non physical, the ethereal, all dance together and produce the miracle of conscious life. (text in accordion book).

Book/object containing a book with digitally manipulated images, an accordion book with text and an accordion shaped title. The inside cover when lifted reveals a miniature version of the Memory Trace images. All encased in a box. Box size: 31.4x41.6x5 cm, book size: 13x35x2 cm - Unique.  

Purchased by: BAnQ - Bibliothèque et Archives nationales du Québec [Canada]