Afterimage is an investigation into conditions of viewership, and what the implications might be of viewing the after image of history in our present surroundings. As a framework for this exploration, the installation features a video projection depicting the locations of all of the cinemas in operation on Portsea Island, Portsmouth, between the turn of the 20th century and their post-war decline. Each image is a static shot, almost photographic in its stillness, with the camera facing towards absent and unused screens as if mimicking the former audiences’ points of view.

The terms of their use in relation to viewership has changed, the cinemas replaced by a plethora of contemporary life, but these locations are systematically reformed into a new viewership relation by their reappearance on the screen in the gallery.

The video is projected onto one of four freestanding screens, each in a different cinema-standard aspect ratio, with the projection screen in 16:9. A voiceover to the video and installation is a text made of all of the primary descriptive information about the cinemas’ architecture available in the local library, city records office and publications. This process - of using only empirical evidence – proposes a view of this history in a near future when all first hand memories of these places are lost with the next few generations.

Afterimage
Video stills, HD Video, 37min
2011

Afterimage (Frames)
C-Type prints
Installation shots at Galleri Box, Gothenburg, Sweden
March 2011