Artist Statement/ Project Description:

Collective memory is a shared remembrance that develops throughout time. It is a memory that is held by a group of people and is passed on from one generation to the next. In the digital age, the internet has become the most powerful tool for the storing and sharing of text, images, video and other media. Thus, it has become a hugely influential medium for collective and cultural memory.

Thousands of video clips are uploaded, viewed and shared everyday on YouTube. It has the third highest traffic ranking in the world behind Yahoo! and Google. User-generated videos on the web are difficult to suppress since clips can be saved as soon as they are uploaded. Even the most sensitive footage such as Saddam Hussein’s execution can be found on video-sharing websites.

Recently, I’ve been drawn to video clips of the Tiananmen Square protests. The anonymous man or the ‘Unknown Rebel’ stands in front of a column of Chinese Type 59 tanks, preventing their advance. The man moves in front of the first tank as it tries to maneuver around him. As the tank’s engine turns off, the man climbs the tank and bangs on the lid. This image becomes a symbol of resistance, struggle and oppression.

Every time I watch this clip I feel an uneasy sense of desperation and guilt. I feel anxious for an event that I will never know or experience. Would such an event have touched my life more intimately if I had lived alongside it? Consisting now of pixels, binary digits and audio waves; what would I have felt that I cannot feel now? As YouTube plays an increasingly larger role in our need to find and cling to bits of the past, I wonder how many of our memories are created, enhanced or maintained by it?

My project serves as an exploration of the Web and YouTube as a medium for collective memory. It is a Flash-based piece, consisting of film, animation and elements of interactivity. Video clips of the JFK assassination in 1963 and the September 11th 2001 World Trade Center attacks are used as examples of collective memory. Footage from each event is edited with cutaways to random, archived ‘home movie’ footage.