Reflect The Truth

 

The Black Box

 

At the time I could no more believe my eyes than I can now trust my memory.

This then, I thought, as I looked round about me, is the representation of history. It requires a falsification of perspective. We, the survivors, see everything from above, see everything at once, and still we do not know how it was.

W.G. Sebald, The Rings of Saturn

 

In May 1940, the Nazis took the northern town of Lille, France, bombing some parts of the city before sending their troupes in. One of the houses hit during the air attacks was the family house of my grandmother – my mum’s mother – then a 13 years old girl. After few days waiting alone in a makeshift hospital, where German soldiers had brought her, she was amputated from her entire right leg.

Lille’s suburbs were to suffer more bombings in the next years, perpetrated from the Allies this time.

Of my grandfather, my dad’s father, there is very little I know, having met him only a few times. One of the things I’ve been told is he was a war pilot during the conflict. It resulted in burdensome memories, which would become verbal during fever episodes, as he got older.

In 2015, in a flea market near London, I found about 200 photographic negatives clogged in a black metal box. The first images I got to see were a portrait of a woman and a snapshot of soldiers standing by an RAF plane.

Based on archival materials, The Black Box (2015-16) alludes to both memory and history and questions their system of representation and relation to truth.

Evolving around the themes of war, guilt, trauma, escape and amnesia, the work gives rise to a state of uncertainty that ultimately echoes our own struggle to, not only comprehend the past but also trust the present.

Neither true nor false, it is always in-between.

 

 

眼中所见,记忆所及,都是不切实际。

我想,这就是了,我环顾四周,这是历史的代表。需要透视伪造的眼光。我们,幸存者们,从上方的口径了解一切,一次需要看到所有,而依旧不知道事实是怎么回事。

W.G. 西博尔德 《土星的光环》

19405月,纳粹占领了法国北部城镇Lille. 先空袭了城里包括我外婆的房子在内的一些区域,再进城。我的外婆当时只是个十三岁的小女孩。几天后伤得不轻的她被德国军人带到当地临时搭建的医院里,右腿被截肢。接下来的几年里Lille又多次被空袭,只不过这几次,是盟军的炸弹。

我和我的祖父只见过几次面,我被告知的为数不多的几件事之一是,他在是战斗机飞行员。战争造成了他的创伤记忆,当他老了,在发烧的片段里留下只言片语。

2015年在伦敦附近的跳蚤市场里,在一个金属黑匣子里,我找到了大约200幅底片。我首先看到的两张照片分别是一位女士的肖像以及一张对站在RAF战斗机旁的士兵的抓拍。

依据档案资料,作品《黑匣子》(2015-16)暗示记忆和历史,也让人质疑他们的系统和真实的联系。

围绕战争,内疚,外伤,逃生和失忆的主题演进,作品的不确定和我们自己的不确定相呼应,带来无法理解的过去,也无法相信的现在。

似是而非,徘徊在中间地带.

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