TIMESTABLES GIRL
This short film plays with ideas of how we receive, remember and transmit information, traditionally and technologically. The film is projected on and through photographic images of the girl printed on silk organza at lifesize, suspended at eye level.
This short film plays with ideas of how we receive, remember and transmit information, traditionally and technologically. It gestures at how technology enhances but diminishes our need to develop a healthy memory. Times Tables Girl is symbolic for me, of the rituals and steps of traditional learning and prowess, signifying rites of passage as a child, such as learning to write, memorizing your times tables for immediate recall, and solving sums in your head. The devices in our hands begin to replace our memory and the necessity to work things out in the brain.
She stands as if floating in a void of black. She recites the times tables from 1 through to 12. The footage of her entire times tables is projected onto a sheet of silk suspended from the ceiling in the middle of the gallery space.
Times tables Girl’s voice marking time can be heard throughout the space, connecting all of the other bodies of work which also denote modes of communication, imagining time experienced in different ways and its relevance to our lives.
The occasional mistake she makes emphasizes the quality of endearment and grace to be found in imperfection, that humanize her performance and remind us of our strange expectations for velocity, accuracy and precision in everything now.