12th June 2019
I keep returning to Hi-8 videotape my father shot in the winter of 1995/6, that until a month ago, I did not know even existed. The tape had been lying dormant in a box with the camera he had bought.
‘Today is the 25th December 1995.’
I am looking at the house we grew up in; it is covered with snow. My father has walked part way up the hill; he continually comments on the scene but the tape has degraded so it’s difficult to catch exactly what he says – every time I view the footage I glean a different meaning.
I have been a servant to the video. It called out to me to mend it, but I also wanted to destroy it; it has been re-captured digitally, held within different codes, the signals have reconvened, allowing a different picture to emerge, an-other home movie.
Commissioned by Ruth Noack for ‘Sleeping with a Vengeance, Dreaming of a Life‘, Snow is a performative video diary; a family archaeology of what you can and can’t ‘uncover’, ‘access’ through the image.