Memories & Projections Suggesting the Present

7’10”, Color Digital Video
October 2010 
Artist’s Statement
By Emma Johnson

Memories & Projections Suggesting the Present shows a still image of shoes lying on a rug just inside the entryway of a house. If you enter apartments or houses, usually shoes upon shoes for all occasions are piled up by each resident. Using eleven layers of video, one layer pictures shoes as a snapshot of a moment in time. That is, one image stays constant for the whole film.


A life composed of millions of moments is represented in one scene. As viewers stare at the shoes, they are invited to vicariously become the protagonist and think about their own shoes and their experiences and places—both physically and metaphorically—they’ve been in the past and will go the future. The specific places don’t matter—only the idea of many trips into the world—good, bad, neutral, interesting and boring. Putting shoes on and off and not showing where the person is going leaves it up to the viewer.

Then, like a double-exposed picture, the snapshot remains, but a moving layer is introduced where feet step into shoes, leave and come back. This reinforces the idea of the picture as a stagnant thing representing movement and transience. While all layers are mise-en-scène, some bring in more information as the video progresses.

Other layers play in slow motion, backwards, and in real time. Another is a steady shot that varies its level of transparency to highlight “important” actions, as not all memories are equal (only things that we think of over and over will be transferred from short-term memory to long-term memory). Memories fade in and out resembling stream of consciousness. In some parts not much is happening; other parts are filled with simultaneous actions and become more chaotic.

Foremost, I’d like to invite the viewer to contemplate and reflect.