Voice recordings , 2014 - 2017
Further images
-
(View a larger image of thumbnail 1
)
-
(View a larger image of thumbnail 2
)
-
(View a larger image of thumbnail 3
)
-
(View a larger image of thumbnail 4
)
-
(View a larger image of thumbnail 5
)
-
(View a larger image of thumbnail 6
)
-
(View a larger image of thumbnail 7
)
-
(View a larger image of thumbnail 8
)
-
(View a larger image of thumbnail 9
)
-
(View a larger image of thumbnail 10
)
-
(View a larger image of thumbnail 11
)
Some of the messages my mother left on my answering machine in the late ’90s and early 2000s were so outlandish that I saved the tapes. In 2002 I started recording our conversations over the telephone. I asked her about life, love, and death. I asked her about her life. I asked her if she remembered any of her dreams. The recordings resonate now in a way they didn’t then, hearing her talk about her youth in a voice scarred by smoke and age.
These are dub plates—one-off, acetate discs used to test recordings before they are mastered and pressed onto vinyl for mass consumption—engraved with my mother’s voice. They aren’t meant to last and so deteriorate with each play.
Our memories are not carbon copies of the original event. Each time we try to replay an event, the memory is refigured. With each remembrance, a memory grows more distorted. Like memory, each time the voice is summoned, each time the needle is dropped, the album decomposes.