kanashibari, shadow archive

kanashibari, shadow archive is an interactive website and a sculptural, drawing and light installation that examines the impossibilities and possibilities that exist within articulating and archiving traumatic, collective and personal memories. Both works echo already existing contemporary forms of the archive and the memorial as a means to understand and question the absences within "history." Each form examines our desires to replace the absences of history with manifestations of material culture. Both projects are equally important components and thus mutually interdependent. Online viewers who visit the virtual "archive" activate the installation by triggering a small light. The illuminated drawings appear from the darkness as a 'trace' of what is barely invisible and constantly disappearing within the attempts to articulate the memory of historical traumatic events. The website continues to exist on the web, while the installation's temporal and spatial manifestation is now a 'memory' for audiences who experienced the work.