Working largely in video, making use of montage, found footage and written voiceovers, a key preoccupation of my practice is an exploration of the effects of the increasing rapidity of technological progress, particularly with regards to memory and obsolescence. At a time when we are made to feel as if we have unlimited access to information and, in turn, instant access to the past via the internet, I am interested in exploring the recent past in which not everything was automatically documented or archived, using memory as a tool to excavate information that has gone undocumented.
Recently, I have been exploring the idea of obsolescence through the changing nature of work due to technological and societal changes, both in the recent past and the present day. In current work-in-progress, I’m looking at the history of secretarial labour, shorthand writing and the future of the office space.
Cooperation, economy, industry | 2021 | 00:09:49
Taking its title from the series of slogans inscribed in stone in Frank Lloyd Wright’s Larkin Building, to promote productivity, cooperation, economy, industry, looks at figure of the secretary (or administrative worker) over the last hundred years. Comprised of footage from archival secretarial training films from the mid-Twentieth century and their contemporary equivalents on YouTube and interspersed with flashes of shorthand text, the video explores the idea of the secretary as the keeper of institutional secrets, against a soundtrack built around the repetitive clack of the typewriter.
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