PROCESS - Remember Me

Remember Me is a miniature installation hosted in an old suitcase, designed for an audience-of-one. It comprises: digital animations of original photographs projected into the suitcase opened as a book-flat; a Victorian photograph album, a page of which is the main screen; a scale model of a trench; and a scrim to achieve 3D projection. The audience-of-one watches twelve minutes of images and text projected onto the screens by pico-projectors; an accompanying soundtrack is delivered via headphones for an immersive experience.

Remember Me is an artistic investigation of the fragmentation of memory, identity, and World War 1 commemoration. The names of those depicted are now separated from those who could once name them: these soldiers have gradually joined the ranks of a new kind of Missing. This process is historical but concerns us: we may photograph to remember people and capture life moments, but this installation defamiliarises and interrogates photographs as sites of memory, documentation and stillness, and imbues its photographic subjects with a brief, uncanny re-existence thereby foregrounding their fading narratives and identities.

Remember Me has been shown in Chester Military Museum; Narberth Museum; Bluecoat, Liverpool; Ansdell Library, Lythm St Anne's; Ormskirk and Formby, TaPRA, Salford, and University of Chester, where conference papers were also delivered; and at Liverpool Hope University. It can be installed in most situations within fifteen minutes.

Remember Me is an artistic investigation of the fragmentation of memory, identity, and World War 1 commemoration. The names of those depicted are now separated from those who could once name them: these soldiers have gradually joined the ranks of a new kind of Missing. This process is historical but concerns us: we may photograph to remember people and capture life moments, but this installation defamiliarises and interrogates photographs as sites of memory, documentation and stillness, and imbues its photographic subjects with a brief, uncanny re-existence thereby foregrounding their fading narratives and identities.

The work has been shown in Chester Military Museum; Narberth Museum; Bluecoat, Liverpool; Ansdell Library, Lythm St Anne's; Ormskirk and Formby, TaPRA, Salford, and University of Chester, where conference papers were also delivered; and at Liverpool Hope University. It can be installed in most situations within fifteen minutes.

Some audience responses:

'Stunning'

'... an incredible experience...'

'...beautiful treatment of old photographs...'

'...breathtaking...'

'The notion of an old photograph coming to life and becoming a real person is poignant...'

'Made me cry...'

'Beautifully fitting tribute to a lost generation.'

'...images that disappear of people who left...'

'A poignant look at those lives lost...'

'I experienced presence and loss, and memories that fade away.'

'Truly beautiful.'

'Moving, wonderful digital imagery.'