battling with layers

Due to the nature of re-recording projection, initial layers become so embedded in the work they begin to erase themselves. There is constant struggle for me in losing initial layers and the attempt to perpetually keep the work live through re-projecting and re-recording it.

Although I am interested in a cyclical process it is not so much as an eternal return of absurdist self-looping. There is a sense of futility to true repetition, a process with no outcome as each loop replaces the next. I battle with this process of working yet also retaining some ‘proof of existence’ that each layer has been manually enacted, recorded, mediated and re-enacted.

Christine Kozlov ‘s Information: NoTheory (1971) works as a process of the continuous replacement of information. Through a continuous tape recording the representation of the now perpetually records over the former recorded information, having a two-minute life before it is erased by the new. Unable to be played back at any point the work remains as an imperceptible sound image that exists only in theory (despite its title). Proof of existence does in fact exist in actuality, but is based on probability- as the recorded information is never actually heard. This form of reproduction without representation may be more radical than representation without reproduction, but I feel it remains dry and does not give alot to the viewer, being far more satisfying as a concept than as a physical work.

Unlike Kozlov’s work I am creating a duration in which past and present can co-exist, being simultaneously present. The point at which I generally stop is just before the restrictions of the site or medium make the layers become too abstracted to be recognisable. It is important for a viewer to be able to read the history of the work, within the work. I have toyed with the idea of re-recording over footage, similar to Kozlov, but allowing it to be visible through projecting the former layers recording. The previous layer would not exist except in this re-recording of the projection - and in memory. Taping over the same tape for example (sorry convoluted I know, I am still nutting out the technicalities of this). However being the archivist I am, and part of the reason I continue to work on tape is that I like to have each layer recorded and available as independent footage, even if I am only the one aware of these individual layers. Perhaps this lies in a future project when I record over the recordings themselves, perhaps with the same action simultaneously documenting and resisting existing as documentation.