This short video composition is inspired by a collage I created in 2004 that highlights the transitory and ephemeral nature of emotional experiences. It is part of a series titled “Moments In An Alternate Timeline.”
The video centers around an image of a child dressing up with her mother for Halloween, hesitantly approving the homemade costume being fitted for her. This image is combined with scenes from outside my apartment window and various markers from a turbulent period in my life. During this time, memories, facts, and perspectives merged into what I refer to as the “alternate timeline,” creating an animated tapestry.
To compose the soundtrack, I meditated and connected with the moods and emotions evoked by the photos and videos. My goal was to create a repetitive melody using samples and loops, along with rhythms, to capture the complex organic layering of memories and emotions. This was complemented by diaristic sounds recorded during that time, diegetic sounds from the video elements, and found audio to illustrate the real geographies of my life.
With this soundtrack, the visual elements are animated intuitively, aesthetically, and spontaneously, akin to assembling a collage poetically delineating the liminal space of the collage—The Alternate Timeline.
The piece begins with images from the original collage and incorporates additional images, footage, and sounds that I gathered between 1999 and 2006, the years in which these moments are meant to take place. The materials collected reflect brief visual encounters and sights from my daily life in New York City during that period.