An Elastic Affair

The project, Elastic Memory, is a collaboration between Tricia Treacy and Julianna Foster. A small edition artist book and a photographic installation will be produced from the series of images and text presented here. The title, Elastic Memory comes from various conversations Tricia and Julianna had about how are the moments in our lives that begin to fade and change over time remembered. How those events, people and places of the distant past become inter changeable with the recent past. How sometimes our memory has no unity of a specific place or timeframe and what we remember begins to translate as snippets or excerpts from a larger story. The selected images and text from this project leave room for potential. Potential for a narrative that has many uncertainties and perspectives.


Memory is an elastic affair, we remember selectively just as we perceive selectively. -errol morris

Time fades on

Time fades on and on.
The morning was so bright, so clear
blurs in the eye, fades also.
Time tells what after all.
It's always now, always here.

excerpt from Robert Creeley, Always

Residues of a recollection

moves about finding the residues of a recollection. she tries to catch up to him and tell the story as best she can remember. the story always changes in tone.

Until now

The Collaboration, Elastic Memory, incorporates images and text. Here are excerpts written by Tricia that will be included in an artist book create by the artists:

a splinter of color on the ground brings you to another time, a still in your mind.

step on concrete and feel the wind. you hadn't remembered the softness of it until now.

runs up the stairs. it sounds different without shoes. jumps down two or three steps at a time. it wakes you from a deep sleep.

hold hands as you move throughout the house. wallpaper bits on the ground. dirt sits near the door.

From morning on, I waited

From morning on I waited yesterday,
they knew you wouldn't come, they guessed.
You remember what a lovely day it was?
A holiday! I didn't need a coat.

You came today, and it turned out
A sullen, leaden day,
And it was raining, and somehow late,
And branches cold with running drops.

excerpt, from morning on by Arseniy Tarkovsky
inspiration for some of the images

something unexpected

"like a dream when a presence coming from the depth of memory advances, is recognized, and then suddenly is transformed into something unexpected"

"and something that even before the transformation is already frightened because there's no telling what it might be transformed into"

Italo Calvino, Adventures of a Photographer

At a glimpse

Artists, Tricia Treacy and Julianna Foster started collaborating on a project titled Elastic Memory in the summer of 08. The project is photographically based with references to how we remember and associations and experiences that lead us to certain memories. The selected photographs are presented in a sequence that is intended to question the narrative and provoke the viewer to consider the characters and their relationship to one another.

Are they the same person at different stages of life?
Are they different people having similar experiences?
Is this a series of things occurring in the present or a recurring memory from the past?

Thank you
Molly Ahrens, Lori Spencer, Helen Baldwin, Samara Talkin, Robert Fraze, Greg Ounjian, Lara Henderson