Snow

Snow, 2014, HD Cam, 46 minutes (extract above)

“I keep returning to Hi-8 videotape my father shot in the winter of 1995/6, that until a month ago, I did not know even existed. The tape had been lying dormant in a box with the camera he had bought. 

‘Today is the 25th December 1995.’

 I am looking at the house we grew up in; it is covered with snow. My father has walked part way up the hill; he continually comments on the scene but the tape has degraded so it’s difficult to catch exactly what he says - every time I view the footage I glean a different meaning. 

I have been a servant to the video.  It called out to me to mend it, but I also wanted to destroy it; it has been re-captured digitally, held within different codes, the signals have reconvened, allowing a different picture to emerge, an-other home movie.”
Alia Syed

Commissioned by Ruth Noak for Sleeping with a Vengeance Dreaming of a Life, Snow is a performative video diary; a family archaeology of what you can and can’t ‘uncover’, ‘access’ through the image.

Exhibitions 

2019 - 2020 WKV Stuttgart Germany, Sleeping with a Vengeance, Dreaming of a life