Alison Clark

Echo Machines

A dark room is illuminated by whirring machines. Two slide projectors and a cathode-ray television sit atop an old writing desk. The images displayed span decades, from a family trip in the 1970s, a birthday party in 2001, and contemporary photos taken by the artist in conversation with these unearthed material memories. The projectors follow a strict computerized rhythm, advancing through their slides and creating unplanned associations between the two images. The television's image glides between the projectors, displaying mangled and recut footage which teeters on the edge of total image destruction. At times the work falls completely dark, forcing stillness and reflection on the space and those present. Other times, the work is a flurry of images, advancing too fast to fully comprehend. All of these events occur circumstantially, as the three machines fall in and out of sync with each other. A vast variety of states exist within the work and no two visitors will have the exact same experience.

“If your past was material would you reach out and rearrange it? Would you interweave it with new experiences or possibilities you wish had come to fruition? In this installation entitled Echo Machines, I resequence, arrange and distort materials that have shaped my perception of memory. Two slide projectors converse across decades, bearing images my grandfather took on a family trip in the 1970s and images I created in response to his. In between, an analog monitor displays the output of a vhs. Its images are a recording of distortions produced live while viewing a home movie of my first birthday party. The three echo machines collapse time and space, presenting images from three moments simultaneously and revealing a history of material memory. As a whole, Echo Machines gives space to the grief of lost possibilities. A trans woman impresses her current knowledge on footage of herself as a toddler, recognizing how early the seeds of gender are laid in a person. A granddaughter imagines a conversation she wasn’t able to have while he was alive about generational trauma, queerness and photography. The light of the machines gives form to the room and the bodies that are present within it; turning the implications of material memory onto the viewer. If your past was material would you reach out and rearrange it?”