The word “memory” is dangerous. From its sound in the head, multi-level constructs from scraps of what was can stir up and rise from the depths. Ghost footprints in the future.

Here I am — material girl (“experience has made me rich”). And here it is time, which behaves like a compass needle in the space of a magnetic anomaly. Time trembles, breaks, changes its direction. And the older I get, the more torn it is. Memories that change so with each appeal to them lose their connection, break away, start floating freely. “It was” first turned into “it was with me”, and now it has been transformed into “was it?”. Solidification in amber of the eternal present. In which disk defragmentation is constantly taking place — segments change their position, and in the process they change referents, lose them.

Photographs for dynamic scans are selected as milestones of growing up. They are part of my family album and every picture has me. But “was it?” — access denied.

The name of the project refers to Bob Perelman’s poem “China” (excerpt):

…It’s always time to leave.

…

Run ahead of your shadow.

A sister who looks at the sky at least once every ten years is a good sister. The landscape is teeming with cars.

The train takes you where it’s going.

Bridges with water in between.

People wandering along the endless concrete strips, they are heading towards the plane. Don’t forget what your boots and hat look like when you’re nowhere to be found…

”… in one stationery store in Chinatown, Perelman accidentally stumbled upon a book with photographs, the signatures and font of which obviously remained dead letters for him (or rather, material signifiers).

The sentences in the poem are his captions to the photographs. Their referents are other images, another text, and the “unity” of this poem does not lie in the text at all, but outside it, in the coherent unity of the missing book.” (Frederick Jameson “Marxism and the Interpretation of Culture”).

My story about the project — watch the video.