Paper Monuments

When we return to certain memories, whether they be stored for us as images in the mind, or as binary data, we imagine these figments to be essentially siteless, floating. We think of "the cloud" as existing immanently, all around us, hanging in the air between screens. And it is. But it is also anchored to real, monumental amounts of physical space. It is not just everywhere, it is somewhere on Earth, sitting on millions of square feet of land, ready to be called up in front of any eye with the right keywords. Paper Monuments examines the substance of memory, our relationship to the unseen, and the narrative scaffolding we build around these figments. Analyzing the ever-evolving technologies of memory, this paper reflects on the unending loop between seeing, remembering, and knowing, and the funciton of images within this cycle. It proposes that images are not pointing us toward the past histories or narratives to which they appear to be anchoreed, but towards a future past—a past which has not yet come to be, a perfect past, where we had it all.