neighborhood memory

2010
us geological survey map, magnetic tape, pins, loop cassette
30″ x 40″
non-cochlear sound, diapason gallery, brooklyn, ny

description:

In this work, each of three volunteers follows instructions asking them to circle a block in the neighborhood of the gallery thirty-three times. Using a three-minute endless loop cassette in a dictaphone cassette recorder, the volunteers are instructed to listen continuously, while making recordings at regular intervals based on predetermined cycles of counted numbers. When they are finished walking (and recording their walk), they are instructed to listen back to the fragmented recording of their experience. They then unspool the cassette and wrap the cassette tape around pins pushed into a US Geological survey map of the area surrounding the gallery. The pins are pushed into the corners that mark the block where they walked. The map and tape-marked paths are then exhibited alongside the instructions and the three empty cassette tape housings. From the dialectic of an irretrievable action (the gallery attendee being aware that the work caused the preparator to have listened) and an unplayable recording (the tape both marking the path and itself holding a form of listening), memory becomes suspended in the space of imagination, intangible but imaginable through the process of assemblage undertaken by the viewer/reader.