LAst Words

With Last Words I highlight and aestheticize the real-time “wear and tear” of recorded media by placing a single VHS tape loop between two VCRs connected and playing across two CRT televisions. The repeated looping of the tape eventually wears away both its elasticity as well as the material recorded to it, thus altering the viewing experience with every repetition. This is meant to create a hyper-awareness of the tenuous grasp we have over the material on to which our histories (home movies), and even our culture (the cinema) are constructed. In addition I have stripped away the casings of both the VCRs and the monitors in order to create for myself a deeper engagement with not only the media the apparatus delivers, but also the apparatus itself. Last Words, confronts the visceral mortality of the recorded image, and thus the impermanence of our histories.