Eidetic
I have known many who could not purge the visual past from the present. In fact, many we know exhibit such cognitive intransigence, those moments and minutes which seem locked in their omnipresent consciousness, and the flickers of memory mixed with constructions of torment seem as real as the day they were hatched.
It is always a daunting, emotional exercise beginning a new project, and this one began in the spring of 2013 as I began to explore the human conception–and illusion–of memory. That’s a big project, and a complex one to boot, since memory is both tough to define as well as difficult to understand. In a nutshell, it boils down to this: What is reality, and what is perception? Or are they the same thing?
Mythos
I hesitate to explain the philosophy behind the Recollections show, but here’s a hint: Alfred Schutz, the prominent social philosopher, notes that social experiences are constructed and shared by members of a culture. What those realities reveal presents a clue into the phenomena that underlie the very realities which they inspired.
Acuity
The Recollections project is about memory: how it is formed, the illusions within, and its temporal existence. What are our memories?
The goal: To make us question the very nature of our own “reality.” In that reality, how sharp is our own version of our past, and of others’ pasts?
