suspension.digital
“A drawing is an autobiographical record of one’s discovery of an event – seen, remembered or imagined.”
John Berger
In suspension.digital, Dawes examines the relationship between the archive of private and public memory using a series of hand-drawn animations in charcoal on redundant suspension files.
The animations were drawn using the rotoscope technique, using videos from her own personal archives and footage of world events from public archives.
Art historian Ed Krcma suggests that drawing presents a dialectic of stillness and movement. Hand-drawn animation offers an opportunity to emphasize this, as well as discuss the concept of personal memory not as an inanimate concept, or perfect replication, but a flawed and continually active space.
Animation also presented the ability to use time as a medium – an inherent concept in memory both in its making and its loss. The animation technique of rotoscoping from video frames also provides the chance to investigate indexicality and how it pushes and pulls on our memories as public memories become personal.
The use of charcoal to explore memory erasure, obscuration and loss, and the method of tracing as an obvious link to the concept of the idea of the memory trace. In a paper on artist William Kentridge, art historian Natalie Haziza she reminds us of the story of Butades’ daughter, and the trace as a link to future absence.
