Fact, fiction or hoax - memory, the intertwining of presence and absence

Abstract

The proposed paper, fact, fiction or hoax – Memory, the intertwining of presence and absence, speculatively alleges that visual installation has the potential to operate as an adhesive that enables the viewer to forge poignant connections between the past and present. It proposes that visual installation acts as a pivotal source to weave memory and the imagination in the present to the fact, fiction or hoax of the absent past— addressing the critical role that absence and presence play in relation to one's memory when confronting an installation piece. Two questions the paper proposes of visual installation's connection to absence and presence are:

•Does visual installation have the potential to reveal recollections of the past or the finding of things otherwise forgotten when the individual confronts or encounters it?

•Does memory have the capacity to shift what may have been deemed an ordinary experience into an extraordinary experience by one's encounter of an installation? (Noting that the context of the extraordinary also references the awareness of the recollection itself.)

The relationship of memory to absence and presence will be explored through visual installation as a conduit in revealing past events or experiences embedded in one's memory—questioning what of memory is fact, fiction or hoax. The paper presents a view that visual mechanisms utilised in installation practice provide links to traces of absent events or experiences. These traces can once again become tangible when certain objects and images activate memory's condition to them.