Video art by Will Kendrick, accompanied by a digitised audio version of my text which follows:
We picked up where we left off. Making out like we were in control. As mediums and platforms merged and diverged we lost our footing in the physical world and started drifting freely in space, time, and matter. The image was the story of the last century, but that was only the prologue. A GIF of earth from outer space, spinning through 360 degrees. The sun, rising up over Northern Africa and setting again in the exact same place. At the dawn of the second digital age the image was no longer read as imagery; it became reality. And every time we touched down we picked up where we had left off, as though nothing had changed. The moon hurtles past, clinging to its orbit for all it’s worth. Our tides and our calendars in denial that she is slowly but surely drifting away from us. The nude, in repose. All those naked selfies filling your feed. Take away the figure and you’re left with pink bedrooms, stickers on dressers, posters of pop stars, and school books piled knee-sock-high. We hadn’t even realised we had been shouting. In the beginning we were an anonymous whisper. Then names were exchanged, and locations. Sixty million voices whispered back, and the ears of our children bled. A primary function of memory is to forget. So we picked up where we felt we might have left off.