The temporal shifts in traumatic memory

My practice is a rolling ball of technique. It has gathered along over the decades gestures from super 8, sound tapes & cassettes, video and digital cameras of assorted vintage and definition. These all aesthetically speak to a specific historic moment that I move across. I work with half-images, transfigured, scratched, the worse for wear. These images represent memories, re-cycled through, reformed as only barely remembered gestures that speak to me all at once. These relationships shift over time and every viewing of every new procession kicks up new lines of enquiry. Discarded bits of animation are the detritus that lays the foundation for the next completed film. There are many sentences left half spoken. They lay dormant in my studio, waiting for the arrival of a new technique or memory. Over time, through these repetitive systems a story forms. I try to make sense, to build a narrative line but I become more interested in its collapse, breakdown and uncertainty. I understand this as a tension between what Chris Brewin calls Verbally Accessible Memory (VAM) and Situational Accessible Memory (SAM). Traumatic memory tends to be pure SAM. I construct a concussion of effects, a joy-ride of technologies. The traumatic is an all-at onceness that I want the viewer to be inside of when experiencing my films and performances. It is about hypervigilance, the fragmented and dislocated gesture.