PANAYIOTIS MINA
 

Antiquated Digital Cameras And Smartphones

 

"I had this thought. I wanted to create music work that wasn't my own. A found, sampled score to an idea, not a story. The alleged creator and protagonist is a mysterious alien guest. Part observer, part orientalist and part musician."

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The above text was sent by me to the record label (honest electronics) prior to releasing my music album 'Hawaiiprus'. The rest is history in these truly historical times. Drawing upon issues of historical inaccuracies, fallacies of collective memory and assumptions on cyclical time, I take inspiration from a small part of a myth which talks about antiquated digital cameras. I created an inventory of artefacts from an imaginary collection which I present in a purely digital form. In this way I aim to critique our ideas of historical conservation, the physical museum or online gallery, which claims authority over memory and, through which, ideas of otherness are constructed. To exhibit, as a friend put it, trees within a forest.

 

"There were collections with encyclopaedic ambition, intended as a miniature version of the universe, containing specimens of every category of things and helping to render visible the totality of the universe, which otherwise would remain hidden from human eyes."

- Krzysztof Pomian

 

I remember my friends and family whom I haven't seen for a month or more. Through digital technologies I maintain a sort of mythical status among them. Is their memory of me accurate? Can we ever be friends again?