‘Recordis’ is the Latin term from which the verb ‘to remember’ is derived. In Greco-Roman culture, memory resided in the heart; therefore, remembering literally involved revisiting it and transforming it through emotion.

The functioning of memory is shaped by time, emotion and subjectivity. The consolidation and retention of memories can be disrupted by a range of conditions. This project focuses on depression and Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD). Trauma reshapes the past from the event that fractures it, whilst depression erodes recent memories.

In this context, Recordis is proposed as a process of recalling what has been erased. Through interviews with family members, narrative fragments are recovered, which are then reinterpreted and transformed into a new narrative: a Recordis of its own.

This gesture echoes the myth recounted by Pliny the Elder in his Natural History: faced with the imminent departure of her beloved, a young woman traces the shadow of his profile cast upon the wall with a piece of charcoal to retain his presence. Painting thus emerges as an attempt to fix the ephemeral. Recordis takes up this impulse: to outline the shadow of that which fades, yet persists in a form of permanence.

The final arrangement organises the materials into a system of resonances: old photographs associated with events imagined before or after the image was taken; archives generated from spaces that house the Recordis we wish to preserve; portraits linked to selected fragments of interviews; and, finally, a representation of identity constructed by superimposing fragments from those who still retain ‘real’ memories of the people we are seeking to recover.

The result is the creation of a new archive for the future. Within it, spaces appear as traces of existence, reconstructed according to the aesthetics of each era, generating a fictional yet plausible reality.

–

Artwork included in the exhibition “Interdependencias”, Official Section of PHotoESPAÑA.