The photographs above and below are from a visit to Rafael Lozano-Hemmer’s Atmospheric Memory exhibition, part of Manchester International Festival 2019.
I have fond memories of his Rafael’s previous Manchester exhibition, so was excited to see this new work, housed within a specially constructed exhibition space, built from multiple shipping containers.
After walking through Atmosphonia, a corridor of light and sound washing overhead, I walked into the main exhibition space, dotted with both old and new artworks, with video projections slowly moving across the interior walls.
Having heard about the Cloud Display piece, I’d spent some time beforehand trying to think of an appropriate word. You can see my selection above in the header image. I picked “Eternity” because of the story of Arthur Stace. I first heard about him in Eddie Campbell’s Alec: The Years Have Pants, in a digression on why the “Eternity” was the centrepiece of Sydney’s Millennium fireworks. When it popped into my head again, I did some research and it turn out be even more perfect. For 35 years, Arthur walked across Sydney, graffiting the word half a million times in chalk. Chalk, of course, washes away so today only 2 examples still exist – one written on a Cardboard stored in National Museum of Australia, and the other written inside the bell of the Sydney General Post Office clock tower. This made it the perfect word to appear in a ghostly fog before evaporating away.
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