living inside memories

Recalling a break-up, a self-conscious woman becomes trapped inside the past, as the memory distorts itself she must remember what was forgotten and move on.

Memories of a loved one: The camera explores the dark confines of a flat. Light is still burning in the kitchen; objects are scattered haphazardly on the living room tables. The eyes follow into the labyrinthine self, now turned into space, of a once familiar and now absent person. The narrator’s voice begins by asserting that everything in this place is true. It “shows” the places where the remembered person learned to crochet and where she shelled peas.

The inner voice when navigating a broken heart while memories take you into the brink of madness.

When I close my eyes, certain images linger. The house I used to live in is in the background. I follow the shapeless images and visit the places from the past. I imagine my father's house, although I haven't spoken to him for so long I don't even know where he lives now. Imagining his house is like surmising his life. There are times when passing-by images linger on. With my memory of "now", I'd like to bid farewell to a segment of my past. If a film is where you build up memories, I want to shine a light on the memories of countless failures.

Memory Place follows three moments of memory on the fraying certainty of home. The visualizations are produced through point cloud data using 3D scanning techniques to portray and preserve private and public recollections. The videos invite the viewer to “walk inside” these moments, creating an immersive experience of a fading past. The piece explores the alienation that arises from the changing socio-political climate of Turkey as Istanbul becomes more of an idea than a place. Recollections of safe and cherished times with family remain as the only uninterrupted memories in the changing nature of the city.

Matilda has been stuck in a memory loop, replaying the same moments over and over again. But this blissful act of remembering quickly turns into a compulsion, leaving only distorted images of her beloved memories. Her attempt to break out of this cycle seems successful. But the question arises, can one ever really escape nostalgia? Where do we put all these memories and versions of us that we'll never life through again but await us at the next corner we pass?