I went to Mexico in the spring of 2016. I took some pictures there and developed them
when I got back. I didn't do much with them afterwards, except looking at them
occasionally and showing them to some friends from time to time. Strangely, when I
think of the trip to Mexico now, I find that my memory of the places photographed
becomes increasingly monochromatic. It is as if the memory is usurped by the
black-and-white imageries and anchors itself to a photographic base. In a way, the
photographs become not only the signifier of a piece of memory, but also the signified,
since the memory itself takes the shape of the photographic imageries. The close
relationship between the memory and the imageries seems to project its intimacy onto
my relationship with the photographs. When I look at them now they remind me of a
time that had irretrievably gone. Perhaps, like Roland Barthes said,
"what the Photograph reproduces to infinity has occurred only once: the Photograph
mechanically repeats what could never be repeated existentially." Like memory,
these imageries fade out and make unexpected returns to the mind. When I reminisced
about that trip, when I "woke up" from that memory, I was often amazed by the fact
that the surrounding environment resembled nothing about Mexico, and pondered what
triggered that memory. So I tried to re-present that stark contrast between the
two places—i.e. Teotihuacan and Philadelphia—by juxtaposing the sound
of an urban life and the view of a distant, foreign one. I recorded the sounds at
the time when I thought about those imageries and combined them into one track.
It is intended to be played in a constantly low volume, as to mimic the experience
of the surroundings fading away as someone immerses deeply in the past. Perhaps,
in this way, the photographs can age and evolve, acquiring new experiences, to
combat the sense of "time's relentless melt."