Memory/Lapse - Circuit Artist Moving Image

Why do we remember some things and not others?

Memory/Lapse is a collection of recent artists video from Aotearoa, Malaysia and Thailand that explores the space between memory and oblivion.

Featuring artists MD Brown, Chanasorn Chaikitiporn, Sandy Gibbs, Heather Hayward, Susu and Eddie Wong, Memory/Lapse brings together late-night ruminations, Cold War histories, beloved pets, a forgotten husband, industrial labour and a one second film shot in New Orleans.

Memory can be both personal and collective. Like the city of Ōtautahi Christchurch, the six works in Memory/Lapse weave their history from a patchwork of individual testimony, public record and material fragments. In Memory/Lapse we see that our shared histories are not always recalled in strict alignment.

Using several generations of filmic technologies, Memory/Lapse also explores how the moving image apparatus shapes and influences our recollections. Teetering at the intersection of immediacy and ghostly erasure, the six works in Memory/Lapse filter images and time through Super 8mm film, digital handicam and AI-imagined video.

The programme features three artists with Canterbury connections, artist Heather Hayward, Ilam School of Film graduate MD Brown, and Susu was a SCAPE Public Art Season 2023 Artist with their work installed on Rhododendron Island.

This event has been kindly donated by The Elizabeth Ball Charitable Trust.

Image credits

Main Image: Eddie Wong, Portrait of the Jungle People

Second Image: MD Brown, On the Low Shore

Third Image: Heather Hayward, One Second in New Orleans