Studio 12

Using historical photographs from the City of Yarra's local history archive, Sophie Kahn rebuilt and mapped Gertrude Contemporary into virtual space, to produce an animation, a wax model and a series of digital prints. Merging different historical moments, various layers of architecture and local history were visibe across the geometric forms of the buildings. 'The images testified to the process of their creation in their distortion, the stretching and tears being visible between pixels. The artist's reconstruction of the archive acted to remind us of Walter Benjamin's dictum that ‘to articulate the past historically does not mean to recognize it 'as it really was'... rather to seize hold of a memory as it flashes up at a moment of danger.’

Reconstruction left the viewer to guess at what the danger facing this particular place might be - and for whom it is being preserved. Sound by Kane Daniel - An accompanying exhibition also took place at Collingwood Town Hall, 24.10.03 - 15.11.03.