AXW – CAMERA MEMORIA references the “screen”— What is your take on using it as an image itself and with the image on it set in a room?

Franziska Vogel – On CAMERA MEMORIA:
Do I really exist if no one remembers with me?
CAMERA MEMORIA reflects on the collectiveness of memory in context with the cinematic room. The illusion of room and the illusion of cinema. Collectiveness of memory comes into being by mediums. The medium of my choosing was film. Film is a curious medium, for the material, former celluloid now binary code, is a material that can not be read by looking at it.
In order to see film it takes a combination of things. Light shining through the projecting images on to a screen, which needs to have a special physical ability to reflect the projected light so that we, as viewers, can see it. In order for these two transactions to take place you need space, a room preferably with no light source except the projector. That is the basic of cinema. So film is directly connected to cinema.  The room is essential to reference to the medium film and make it visible.
CAMERA MEMORIA is a 4 Channel Sound & Video installation that resulted from various experiments with projections, film-material, video, sound recording and other mediums. The main goal was to find a visual plastification of memory,  an image that would not leave the realm of illusion, but still presented a new visual for a complex theme.
Augustinus described memory as a room with various objects that we could choose to pick up and reflect upon. In my constructed memory room, the images on the screen are triggered by sounds. The projection can break through and can  create a room beyond the screen, till we are thrown back in the reality of our own surroundings, that seem very alike to the ones on screen.The constant change between full format projections and view of a room with this projection illustrates the illusion of cinema and our own memory.
“Memory” is a word that illustrates the complexity of the process “remembering”. Same as the projection of room illustrates the illusion of cinema. The repetitiveness of pictures in full format changing to the same projection in a room withdraws us from our selves and the room we currently stay in and draws us into the imagination of a room in the screen.
While we enter into the screen further and further, we do never leave ourselves. How can we be sure that the room seen beyond the screen is really a room? That is the immaterialness of memory, it seems very real on the screen, but when the light goes on, we are still in the same body in the same place that we were before.

The basis for the projections are partly own sequences, that should illustrate memory and its ability to be many things at once,  and found footage. It is not important whether the sequences are of your own reception  or others, on memory there are equal experiences.
This is the collective aspect of memory, the things that I experience are very much shaped by the way I reflect upon them with others, through mediums- be it language, film or writing.

This memory room has a screen and we can reflect upon the reality of what we see and wonder if the experience is ours or not, and more importantly, is it necessary to know that it is ours?
The room is scanned through light and sound. These mediums create the barriers of room, just as they dissolve them and we are left with the room we currently stay in.
Video is the starring role in CAMERA MEMORIA. Its attachment to synchronicity delivers the realtime component, that is important when talking and experiencing memory. It delivers the connection and the importance of mediums to create memory in a collective way- sharing and experiencing.

AXW- 

FV- 

The credits of these films are in the order of appearance in the end titles. The choosing of the clips was in part personnel preference and the other was that some of these films tap into the visualisation of memory. Eternal sunshine of the spotless mind is about erasing memories while the Mirror by Tarkovski deals very poetically with the fusing of childhood memories and adult memories. Plus the mirror is a very strong symbol in cinema and film theory. But I think the strongest reason for choosing these clips, are because I very much enjoy these films, there pictorial built up and the inspiration they gave me during the project. They are very much part of my image memory and this experience links me to a lot of other people, that have also watched these films. They are essential for the frame of memory that everyone has. Mementos of films, tales and experienced things come together and built up our memory, identety and our reception of our surroundings.