Afterglow

Authors

  • Angie Lea Tupper OCAD University

DOI:

https://doi.org/10.25071/2292-4736/40283

Keywords:

Home videos, painting, lenticular, hologram, animation

Abstract

You can see Afterglow in motion at https://tiny.cc/uc_afterglow or https://youtu.be/kjKQr38c7qA.


This mixed media piece explores the relationship between memory and home videos. The chosen scene is an everyday glimpse of childhood recreation: my cousins and I swivel in the sand at the water’s edge. I have a distinct memory of the sunshine wicking water droplets from my skin with its radiant warmth, but when I return to re-watch the home video, the light projecting from the screen is an undeniably overcast grey. Even with this discrepancy between my body memory and the recording, I question how much my recollection is a testimony of the immediate sensory experience and how much it is an adaptation of the home video that I have seen replayed so many times. It is one of few recordings that capture my cousin Oliver and me together; 2022 marks the fourteen-year anniversary of his death. The light that bounced off of our forms, that summer afternoon, is re-animated with each replaying of the video. Memory is re-minded with each re-watching.

My process developed as a response to this shifting palimpsest of recollection. After transferring twelve evenly-spaced video frames to canvas, I hand-painted and beaded the degraded stills to match the coloration of my mind’s image. In their final iteration, the canvases are presented in sequence as a lenticular print. Moving in tandem with the viewer, the effect mirrors the physicality of body memory. Each retouched frame can only be viewed in a fugitive moment. The sequence provokes the viewer to waltz around the scene, back and forth, through impressions of time. In contrast, the vertical plastic lenses of the lenticular print recall the striations of traditional televisions. Painterly textures and interactive motion compete with an impression of flatness and locked recording.

It is false to say that the screen is incapable of putting us ‘in the presence of’ the actor. It does so in the same way as a mirror . . . but it is a mirror with a delayed reflection, the tin foil of which retains the image. (Bazin 97)

Author Biography

Angie Lea Tupper, OCAD University

Angie Lea Tupper is a visual artist whose current practice explores personal fantasies and memories through the lens of imaginative realism. She has displayed her work in twelve group shows across the Greater Toronto Area, and two in Florence, Italy. Angie graduated with Distinction from OCAD University's BFA in Drawing & Painting in 2017. She earlier completed two degrees in English, first an Honours BA at the University of Ottawa followed by an MA at the University of Toronto. Visual records have always been central to Angie’s identity. The daughter of an immigration officer, she spent her childhood moving from one country to another every two to three years. Photographs and video recordings function to connect the transient scenery of her early life, beginning in Trinidad and Tobago, then moving on to India, Hungary, Pakistan, and England.

References

Bazin, André. What is Cinema? 1967. Translated by Hugh Gray, vol. 1, U of California P, 2005.

Our Home on Native Land by Kelly King. Three women, a dog, and a cat sit on steps outside of an old house. They are coloured in sepia. Vines of s’gepn—the wild potato plant—climb the sides of the house, coloured in green with the flowers in pink. The grass in front of them women has also been coloured in green.

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Published

2022-10-18

How to Cite

Tupper, A. L. (2022). Afterglow. UnderCurrents: Journal of Critical Environmental Studies, 21, 8–10. https://doi.org/10.25071/2292-4736/40283

Issue

Vol. 21 (2022): Memories and Futurities

Section

Creative

License

Copyright (c) 2022 UnderCurrents: Journal of Critical Environmental Studies

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