Air (2022)
The first in a series of videos about
the alternative history of technology.
While Air (extended) deals with the
tape recorder, Air is more of a
general, non-chronological timeline
of technological breakthroughs that
created discourse about death
and mortality.
I use nonlinearity to mean not just
as a collision of times, but as an
indifference to time— a decision to
follow an order that is more emotive,
personal, and narrative.
video projection, CRT television, micro-cassette
recorder, audio 3:58 minutes
transcript:
if you're watching this
it's already too late
I've become a ghost
I'm not saying I'm dead
I'm saying some day, I will be
and this-
this will outlive me
this is how I preserve my soul,
in a glowing box-shaped jar
on the shelf
an amateur necromancer,
dabbling in phantomachia
once I heard that
the future belongs to ghosts
and all these years later,
I believe it
I open your instagram page
every once in a while
I know it's stupid but
I still get nervous before I look
I think:
"what if something has changed?"
I look at your photos
and in retrospect,
you always looked like you knew
the moment the shutter was clicked,
you were doomed
(every time we get our hands
on something we turn it into
death)
the first time i saw a ghost
it chilled me to the bone
dressed in flowing robes,
arms extended
born of the fantoscope,
but it was so close to me
I couldn't unblur the lines
(every time we create
a new technology,
we use it to look
where we're not allowed
it's my favourite thing
about being a person)
I found myself staring
at the X-rays, all lined up
on the hospital wall
in a meticulously arranged
collage,
the image of my own deathmedically,
it was inconclusive
but mentally,
it was exhilarating
(technology is phantomachia
I run right into it
you ran away from it
tell me where you ran,
when the streets are flooded
with ghosts?)
if you had sold me the fantasy
that everything in the world
is covered in sheets of film
and that I lose a part of my soul
with every recorded image
i would think that
I'm already lost
I look at your photos in spite
you were so right
I've lost so many layers of my soul
to the memory-keepers in my circle
I am omnipresent and unkillable
there's too much of me out there
that I can't take back
but it will be there when
I can no longer be there myself
so I'll keep adding more and more
the air is heavy with ghosts