Material Memories: Homevideo | Videohome

WARNING: This work contains flashing / glitching images which may cause problems for those with photosensitive epilepsy.

Jenny Alderton (They/Them)

Material Memories: Homevideo | Videohome is a touch-capacitive-enabled installation, made of VHS tape, exploring ideas of memory.

VHS is a material created to capture, retain, and replay moments. Seemingly obsolete now, but upon which traces of stories and memories are nevertheless still held.

“HOMEVIDEO | VIDEOHOME” invites contemplation on the unreliability of memory. Recording mediums such as VHS are subject to degradation, loss, or technological obsolescence. Our own memories are similarly fragile, being malleable and subject to unconscious adjustments. Over time, our memories change. Thus, every moment experienced is unique, and no memory or recording can completely relive it or reliably recount details indefinitely.

As a neurodivergent person with a chronic health condition, I find memories difficult to recall or perhaps form. They often feel just out of reach, intangible, or untethered. A floating, foundationless house is something familiar, yet strange: a structure disconnected from its nature. This is a disconnect I feel with memories and therefore myself.

The touch-capacitive nature of the work talks to society's move from tangible, material objects into a more virtual space, and the effect this has on how we interact with, view, and remember the world. An overreliance on recording and presenting our lives online may make us less likely to remember the events. When we tangibly and physically engage, we are more involved in the moment, and I feel more likely to truly experience and remember.

Big thanks to the Electromagnetic Festival for showing the work and the team for all their support!! Thank you to Jonathan Hogg for coding help, Tom Fox for Spoke and coding advice, and Immersive Arts, whose fund allowed me to learn some coding and create touch-capacitive-enabled works. Thank you to Liza for the wedding video.

Jenny Alderton is a Welsh-based interdisciplinary artist, working with movement, video, and installation. Their practice engages with concepts of self and identity, (dis)connectivity and (dis)communication, neurodivergence and chronic ill health, as well as psychogeography, space, and place. www.eloquentscream.com www.instagram.com/eloquentscream