There and Now What

Re-enactments strive to keep certain moments in collective history alive. Or, if not more, maintaining personal connection to the legacy of your context: to your nation, territory, history. There and now what is a (re)integration of scenes from the past, specific moments lived but not remembered. Family images, videos, the archive constructs the image of self in the early childhood.
Being three years old, the last thing you are is self-conscious. Through this gap of relatability and ownership, I’ve decided to truly possess scenes and actions: re-enactment.

There is a loop, an absurd repetition of one’s actions captured years ago. It is a time which is unquestionably part of your history, but not present in your memory. Does this make up for your identity, and how do you even relate to time, which is in your possession but equally foreign? Perhaps it is formulated in the words of nostalgia, or just the fact that your mother tells you that it is you – the little toddler putting cigarette buds in the mouth – on the video taken in 1996. In this landscape, my history is no longer inexperienced, but implanted in my timeline. Perhaps the dates defy the natural chronology, but at least the cycle makes sense. The video from 1996 now truly archives a memory – the one from 2021.

The scenography is inhabited. The objects seem to be moving in an almost forced procession. Perhaps this inevitability is the point of absurdity – the helplessness when trying to make sense of time? Is it a space in between time? A fusion of history from there and then within here and now is as real as it can get. To be more precise: to stand in a timeless territory, only to realize there is nothing there but time.