Patches of Time (PoT): Performing Memory through photographic (re)construction.

Lawrence Agbetsise

Abstract

This study examines the relationship between the narratives in audio-visual artwork and the temporality of historical preservation within sociocultural contexts of destruction and re-construction, and rusting, through the concept of Sankofa. The series of photographic  artworks titled “Patches of Time” delves into the socio-cultural fabric of memory, historical sites, forest, and the contemporary reconstruction of the past. Together with the written content, I show various forms of media such as photos, sound files and videos that reveal different aspects of the audio-visual practice. The photos and sound compositions are discussed here as ways of doing and making, exposing the experiences that hold aesthetic qualities and a sense of the sublime. The materiality of the photos and soundscapes mirrors an archaeological process, where remnants of the past are not only recovered but also recontextualized within contemporary sociocultural frameworks. Specifically, I investigate the integration of destruction and re-construction which aligns with Walter Benjamin’s notion that reproduction destabilizes traditional narratives, offering opportunities for reimagining history, and reshapes the aura of cultural artifacts. The destruction and re-construction of these photos impacts the narrative gestures of going back and starting anew (Sankofa). The study aims to observe the interconnectedness of art, memory and the mind as historical sites and explore the potential for re-imaging the nature of audio-photographic art.

Keywords: Temporality, Memory, Sankofa, Photos, Historical Sites

Participating in artistic research

Artistic research usually takes the shape of combining the social practice of research and texts, images, sounds, as well as processes to produce new artworks or aesthetic processes through which the image, the artist as the researcher envisions prevails. This is what H. Borgdorff describes as the process of seeking to contribute, in and through the production of art, not only to the artistic universe, but also to what we ‘know’ and ‘understand’. Similar to the descriptions of artistic research mentioned above, this paper titled “Patches of Time”, uses audio-visual composition while looking at the methods and models behind the aesthetic, intuitive and, possibly, technical decisions that led to the audio-visual composition as it is. 

Audio-visual composition, also termed as audio-photographic art is defined as a creative practice that utilizes sound and photographic images in an effort to create immersive and affective installations (Santamas, 2015). The audio-visual composition itself is a research process, as it explores the photographic and compositional approaches that fall into the aesthetics of “rust” or “fading” memory, the inherent whispers of nature sounds and the need to go back in time. By aiming at an understanding, patches of time also contribute to the possibility of analyzing my own creative process by comparison. By sharing it, it is my desire to promote an insider appreciation of capturing time, photographic memory and audio-visual tools and strategies in order to demystify them within academic and artistic research discourses. In this way, the performance of memory, photos and history can be embraced and inclusive. Many theorists have noted that photography has a distinctive manner of representing temporality.

Roland Barthes in his book Camera Lucida (1981)’ which was later translated by Howard (2000) posits that photography has a peculiar capacity to represent the past in the present, and thus to imply the passing of time in general. He argues that all photographs speak of the inevitability of our own death in the future. Barthes’ analysis poses a challenge to all commentators on photography and seeks to ask an important question;

                    “What exactly is photography’s relationship to time, and by extension, to reality?”

Belden-Adams (2010) assertion about the fluid relationship of photography to time further echoes Barthes and Howard’s arguments that giving meaning to these moments can only be done by exploring the motivations for photography’s insistent struggle to: i) reorganize time’s passage, ii) freeze or slow it for a moment, or iii) give form to time’s fluctuating conditions.  These motivations are the underpins of this Patch of Time project.

Methodology

This exposition draws on a comparative analysis of the artistic creation process and its conceptual interpretation to address the research question:

How do the photographic performance of memory and the concept of Sankofa serve as symbolic reflections of historical preservation in audio-visual compositions?

In what ways does the concept of Sankofa inform the reinterpretation and recontextualization of historical memory in audio-visual compositions?

The inquiry adopts a storytelling and parallel self-referential case study, where my artwork which was used as ‘case study’ was observed. This observation was facilitated by the digital environment, allowing for simultaneous observation and commentary on the transitions of the exposition.

Additionally, there were two forms of documenting the study outcome:

i)               A text description of the research process including the different phases of idea conception (Epiphany), conceptualization (Insight), & development (Stimuli) artistic creation (The making) and finally the interpretation (Aesthetics, Sublime and Representation).

ii)             A cut out of spill “patch” annotation attached to the writeup. Thus, this presentation offered a critical exploration of the audio-visual composition process, to present a case study. Although specific to audio-photographic art, it could potentially transverses any discipline.

Consequently, it also delved into a parallel reflection on Intentionality, improvisation, and representation, through the deliberate approach to photographic (re)construction, in relation to the Sankofa principle of retrieving fragments of the past to critically engage with the present. While navigating the manipulation of photographic materials and soundscapes. The creative process involved an element of unpredictability, where rusting, tearing, and reassembling became acts of intuitive engagement rather than rigidly planned steps. Finally, the use of multiple media formats not only diversified the ways in which memory and temporality were expressed but also raised critical questions about the authenticity and mediation of historical narratives. By combining visual fragment with sound and textual reflections, the project demonstrated how representation is an active process of meaning-making. Therefore, forming a conceptual framework through which the study examined how memory is performed through artistic practice.

(Past – Past): The Epiphany

In March of 2018, while in a Documentary Residency organized by the Dok.Network (Dok.fest Munich), and working on my documentary project “Untold Rumors'’ (Agbetsise, 2018), I attended a film festival ‘Nonfiktionale Bad Aibling’ in Bad Aibling located in the upper Bavaria in Munich - Germany. There, I interacted with the festival director who, after knowing I’m from Ghana, was clutching on straws of his memory to remember a Ghanaian filmmaker, King Ampaw. The two of  had crossed paths in Munich some decades before he met me, also a Ghanaian. At this moment, I had an epiphany; I imagined something along the lines of a minimalist approach to this memory of the two of them meeting. For example: what could be the imagery and soundscapes in this fleeting memory? Also, what kind of audio-visual work can provide the same effect?

To satisfy this curiosity, I thought of creating an artwork encompassing photos and found sound to construct the historical and mnemonic account about the event. I thought of incorporating the post-Duchamp strategy of choosing allegorical elements, commonly known as ready-mades^[1], while incorporating the Ghanaian concept of “Sankofa^[2]” literally translating “Going back to get it”. I wanted to reconstruct these ready-mades to form a new depiction of a new notion of situated knowledge as used by Haraway, (1988) to harness the concept of Sankofa. This is something that I had never tried with photos and films, which is in line with what Krzysztof Wodiczko defines as Remembrance and Forgetting.

(Past – Present): The Insight

Fast forward, nearly two years after the “Munich epiphany”, I found myself in another European country, Portugal, to pursue an Erasmus Mundus Master in Filmmaking. Following my curiosity to know more about the history of the first European country to sail to the coasts of Ghana, engaged in the transatlantic trade while building forts and castles which are now historical sites in Ghana. I wanted to find inspiration from the documentations of historical happenings as done by artists like Tacita Dean, William Kentridge, Gerhard Richter and El Anatsui whose art is heavily influenced and inspired by concepts of memory, history, nostalgia and melancholy.

And one of the places to see or hear about such history in Portugal is the Peña Palace in Sintra. I had hiked the castle trail for a number of times but on this particular day, for the first time, this known path felt unknown. It felt like a pilgrimage to the past medieval, I was in a trance and completely possessed as I could only notice the ash and patch and see through the history and stories linked. The patches of memory from my home, like a movie, continually recreated these wrinkles of memory that linger on my mind.

I was Looking and Asking when do we call over, over and done, done, because the patches never fade but only build up. I was able to make some associations with some of the leaves (herbs) which represented times when my grandfather taught me how to cure some diseases with similar herbs. This memory felt fresh and present, blurring the past and present simultaneously, this experience is akin to the element that jumps out at a person when they view a photograph because it has evoked personal feeling of the viewer, a phenomenon Barthes describes as punctum^[3] (Camera Lucida ,2000). It is that bit of rare detail or patch that causes us to “love” a photo instead of merely liking it or the direct and powerful relationship between the observer and a particular signifier in the image. We can learn about the world from the figures, shapes, gestures and settings we observed in photographs, for example, Berthes believed photographs were a kind of education because they help us visualize good historical scenes.

With this in mind, my awareness of the sounds of nature “Wind, Water, Earth, Fire and human presence became more profound as I could relate them to different emotions. I found sounds because they were very present in my hikes, this historical site and very specific to the condition of memory at the time. Some were seasonal as they occurred as a result of the number of human bodies present in the forest and historical sites, the laugh and crying wind emanating between the leaves of the trees create a resounding acoustics of pain and joy.

At this point, it became clear I had identified different emotive sounds of nature. However, this was just an idea, I collected these sounds knowing I will get back to it later (sankofa). I selected the photo “Of Hope & Of Fear” that had an energetic punctum and with this choice, a first impression emerged: the acoustics of two opposite forces - one of them bleak, distant and negative and the other intimate, sensitive and positive. These forces would slowly overlap and establish themselves in space and as such trigger a certain “actualization of senses” when experienced conjointly with the photo.

(Present - Future): The making

The initial process was quite messy and puzzling in ways that are difficult to articulate. However, enrolling in the PEERS^[4] program increased my interest to explore what it means to conduct artistic research with our home-grown philosophies like “Sankofa” from the global South including Ghana. Sankofa^[5] is a concept from the Akan people of Ghana emphasizing the importance of reaching back to knowledge gained in the past and bringing it into the present for future narratives. This dual movement - backwards to retrieve and forward to advance - provides a unique framework for examining memories. The videos, sound file and pictures presented in this exposition were meticulously and intuitively taken with a smartphone.

I started processing from a touchpoint of improvisation and intentionality, which has been a natural part of the practice, but not properly articulated. I attempted to capture the soul otherwise known as punctum of both the re-constructed photos and the related sounds. As well as exploring the subjective experience of photographic materials and making, I recognize the effectiveness of intentionally improvising and experimenting allows the creative process to unfold organically. In this exposition, making is a means to realize what is meaningful in the context of practice.

The very first notion of material aesthetics to me was the sound of “tearing photos”. This aesthetic experience from the process of making was the initiative that led me further toward materiality of sounds of nature. An aesthetic quality of rust, decay and memory erosion is sublime. As philosopher Immanuel Kant (1724-1804) distinguished between beauty and the sublime as boundless in the words below:

“Sublime is best described as a feeling of the wonder and awe of the power and immensity of nature. We feel sublime when we see the eruption of a volcano. There is a sense of feeling small when we experience the sublime.”

Like Patches of Time (PoT), we feel small when we know our memory corrodes its imagination of beauty. Whereas beauty is always pleasurable the sublime may involve a sense of pain or fear.  For Kant, artworks themselves cannot be sublime but in representing natural events they can cause sublime feelings.

Similarly, Sir Edmund Burke (1729-1797) writes specifically about the causes of the sublime, its features and how it differs from the beautiful. Burke believed that pain was more powerful than pleasure and as a result the sublime was more powerful an experience than beauty. He stated that art induces powerful emotions primarily through sympathy and our capability to imagine ourselves in someone else’s shoes. As a result, he thought that all people take some degree of delight from other people’s misfortunes. In parallel, the continuous rusting, decay of objects or our memory produce a sense of the sublime.

(Present - Present): Stimuli of Patches of Time

Roland Barthes in his phenomenological study of photography Camera Lucida (2000) claims that the photograph is a defeat of time that captures a single moment, trapping it inside a frame, yet, a temporal difference between static and moving images. While reflecting on this assertion with my friend and artist Delanyo Sabblah, he suggested the trend of treating art as event “posters”, where there is an enshrined expiry attached to the gestures it embodies. Welcoming the idea, I experimented by putting the photos under harsh treatment to undergo wear and tear. By submerging the photos in water, I engaged in a deliberate process of alteration, manipulating the image to evoke contemplation about the nature of memory itself like this, In this sense, soaking the photo in water becomes not only an expression but also a profound meditation on the fluidity of memory and the power of visual images to evoke emotion and provoke introspection. This intentional alteration serves as a metaphor for the inherent fluidity of memory, highlighting how our perceptions of the past are shaped by individual experiences, biases, and interpretations.

In an attempt to explore the destruction and reconstruction of memory of historical sites, forest, and repurposing the “poster gestures” of the photos, I deliberately tore the photos to form a puzzle and explore the malleability of memory. By fragmenting the photos, I aimed to provoke viewers to question the reliability of visual representations and the subjective nature of recollection. I tore each photograph in half, then tore the halves into quarters, the quarters into eighths, until the image was a confetti of memories. This destruction of the photo (past), emerged as a relief from chaos and pain, and a representation of ‘the past is just that - the past’, but the memories would always remain.

I therefore, gather the torn puzzled pieces, not to discard them, but to re-create and re-interpret the memories associated. The resulting artwork reflects both the spontaneity of creation and the intentional choices I made along the way. Through this artistic process, the torn photograph becomes a canvas for introspection, inviting viewers to reconsider their own relationship with memory and the stories we construct from fragments of the past and shows how looking back at what was lost (destruction) can guide the reconstruction of memory and historical narratives.

With the description of the three audio-visuals presented below, I have been able to articulate the material reactions and other influential aspects steering the process of creation in this exposition.

(Future – Past): Aesthetics, Sublime and Representation

The artworks presented depict the process of making where the making is also regarded as the knowing process. The spheres of knowledge, material thinking and experience that are fostered through creative work have long and extensive histories (Mäkelä & O’Riley, 2012) and have been acknowledged in practice-led research where the research questions often arise out of the practice itself. The purpose of this exposition is to reflect on:

i)    The photographic performance of memory, and

ii)  How the concept of Sankofa serves as symbolic reflections of historical preservation in audio-visual compositions?

Mäkelä points out that the spectatorial engagement together with thought, material and reflection is at the root of the process, and the research targets the unknown without knowing where the outcomes of the research might settle (Mäkelä & O’Riley, 2012). As (Friedenberg, 2020) remarks, we enjoy the experience of art and often say it is “aesthetic”, but why do we like art and what goes on in our heads when we have an aesthetic experience? Attempting to define these terms such as beauty, art and creativity requires complex interpretations that even the experts cannot fully agree on what these terms mean. One basic quality of understanding them in this research requires the personal history of the viewer and the inherent punctum perceived as beauty in the artwork itself. The intertwining effect of aesthetics and the sublime are fundamental elements that shape the viewer's experience.

Thus, by exploring the indigenous concept of Sankofa through the tearing and puzzling of the destroyed photos feeds into the cognitive function of remembering and forgetting of memories. The process of reconstructions in “Patches of Time” was developed through “Play” as a form of cognitive brain exercise. The inclusion of play in my art practice allows for new outcomes to emerge through authentic expression without the constraints of rigid expectation. By embracing the playful mode, I entered the “flow state” fully immersing myself in the deep focus while engaging in the “puzzle performance”. The destruction process of tearing of photos inherent in the research advanced to forming a jigsaw puzzle consisting of two forms – simple like this, and complex like this. The puzzle pieces of photos were reconstructed from memory power, that is, without a reference image. It was arranged on a hard paper with glued surface, allowing for an apt arrangement enhancing the textural contrasts and drawing attention to the new forms created through the process of Sankofa. This experience highlights the importance of maintaining a sense of curiosity, spontaneity, and joy in the creative process. Remembering the shapes, colors, visuals and patterns of puzzle pieces can enhance critical thinking and problem-solving skills, while strengthening neural connections related to memory.

Finally, recording and re-recording ambient sounds of nature for an extended period of time, is necessary to codify and link the individual soundscapes to specific emotions. The process of going back and forth reveals the affective experience of the sounds, which is characterized by its repetition and its extremity. The infusion of recorded sounds and found sounds create a unique blend like (lonely wind + giggling fire)[6] and (joyous earth + guilty water)[7] forming profound and minimalist composition. This attribution of feelings and sensation create a constellation of rhythmic sound and still images overwhelmed by time.

The resulting artworks this, this and this  represent its own idea and not itself. It gradually becomes what it represents to different viewers based on their individual histories, instead of presenting itself. The meaning of a photograph, or the sound composition alone creates an individual experience but when consumed conjointly creates a whole experience which is sustained by the viewer’s intuition, not the artist’s intentions. As (Bal, 2002) posits “the artist is involved only part of the way. He / she disappears, gives his work over to a public he / she will not know. What happens after the work has been made is not determinable by artistic will”.

Conclusion

The series of artworks "Patches of Time" served as a way to address the sublime and aesthetic approach of discussing the possibility of the past and reconstruction of it, other than forgetting them. Using Sankofa as the conceptual framework, this exposition combines indigenous knowledge systems and practical artistic research (Koskinen et al. 2013) uses a qualitative methodological approach. applying my personal insight regarding memories, using photos and sounds of nature in an attempt to create an immersive experience, it became clear to me that there’s a bit of an overlap between memory and attention.

Through the act of destroying and piecing together the puzzles, these artworks interpreted the echoes of memory and memory itself. It was found that the emerging narratives from the fragments of memory, requires an audience to fully appreciate the significance of their own history. While reflecting on Roger Scruton assertions about the subjectivity of beauty in his book “Beauty: A Very Short Introduction, I found myself answering his question about where beauty lies and how it does not seem to be in the stimulus or thing that causes us to experience beauty. I believe the circumstances around memories through which people call beautiful are too many and variable from one situation to the other, especially whether or not they remember these memories. This exposition contextualizes memories in the sense that anything can be called beautiful including; abstract ideas, works of art and works of nature, and even the possibility of beauty emanating from us through the way we react to things.

The findings suggest that the reconstructed patch is an embodied memory whose presence is still strong and offers a new interpretation and perspective. Also, using sounds of nature that the ear hears always but the mind does not focus on, and merging them in opposition creates a deepen experience with the artworks.

Based on the discussions presented, It became apparent the interplay between the visual fragments and the soundscape can evoke a sense of the sublime, and the relationship between memory, mind, destruction and reconstruction is complex and reflects themes of resilience and passage of time. The artworks become detached from the context of their creation when presented is a different context and are reduced to mere aesthetic artifacts. In conclusion, using Sankofa as a guiding principle, guided the reconstruction process, integrating historical awareness and re-imagining with contemporary artistic practice.

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