Bill Albertini

Solaris:Eclipsing Memory, Bill Albertini @ Alona Kagan Gallery
...
Bill Albertini."Memory Index", 1994-2004.
...
This is the fertile ground where Bill Albertini has located his recent work, called "Memory Index 1999-2004."This show consists of some six hundred images that Bill has been working on "episodically" since 1999.
...
This is what we might consider Albertini means by "forced film time."

The plot of Solaris deals with characters confronting manifestations of their memories.Most of us never have to confront our memories outside of our own head.Episodic memories are often recalled over and over again without leaving our mental sphere.But what if those memories manifested themselves and we had to confront them in the physically present here and now?Solaris and Albertini's project ask this same question.

After seeing Solaris in the 1970's, Albertini collected, cultivated and developed images based on his memory of the film.He gathered what he calls the "core group," some 126 images, before seeing the film again.Once he had finally viewed the film again, he collected frames from the original that matched his "core group" of recollected images and edited the film stills he had matched to his own creations.To this matched set of images, he assigned a frame code, each matched set getting the same code.The code corresponded to the place in the film from which the matched image was taken.This group of images was shown together in 2002, after which Albertini took a break from the project.

When he returned to the work, he abandoned the notion that the time code should exist as an artifact, marking the place in the film where his original memories corresponded to the film.He also stopped looking at the finished "segment" of "Memory Index."The work at Alona Kagan Gallery was developed from not only the memory of the film but from the memory of the project up to that point.The original memory of the film had been replaced by the project in which it was contained.