THE CARETAKER | Issue #13

The moment we record things they become spectral. We might not notice them as ghosts at first. Often the spectrality is totally invisible to us – such is the illusion of presence in our creations. As time goes by and the medium breaks down, we notice ghosts emerging, before eventually they too disappear, as the matter that once preserved their trace so well, is exorcised by natural decay. Recordings are not natural, they are creations that we desire. We are makers first and foremost. We routinely organise matter into tools, structures and the phantoms that suit our emotional needs – but matter was not built for our needs. It is subject to a myriad of other forces that always gradually undo our work. Ultimately it is this, inescapable fact of nature, that haunts us in everything we record.
Michael C. Coldwell

“The past is always-already a work – a texture or fabric or web – of hallucinations.”
Louis Armand, Entropology, Pg. 74

STAGE 1

Paramnesiac

While confabulation is pathological by definition, all people include an inventive (and thus spurious) element in their remembering. Indeed, it seems valid to say that all remembering depends heavily on reconstruction rather than on mere reproduction alone. Among those affected by amnesia, reconstruction is especially drastic, inventive, and error-prone, particularly in regard to chronological sequence. The difference, therefore, between ordinary and grossly amnesic confabulation may well be one of degree rather than kind.

STAGE 2