Findings (Interactive video installation, 2007) - Available also as single channel video. Video projection, tiles, lamps, computer. Max/MSP, Cyclops, camera.

This interactive video installation comments on migration and the fragile nature of memory, and how it aids in the construction of a subjective history in relation to physical traces, fleeting images and photographs.

"Findings" contains four brief testimonies that provide limited access to the history of the family on my father's side, who migrated from Palestine to Colombia in the 1920s. The piece is constructed as fragments of stories, drawn from everyday conversations, around the history of my grandfather's generation. The videos projected consist of a visual exploration of archival photographs that accompany some of the testimonies and that are chosen more by intuition than by historical precision. The emphasis is placed on the phantasmagoric quality of photographs and the absences that they stand for. There is no recreation of memory, and no search for truth, but a projection of my own nostalgic longing for the other, and the communication of affect through aesthetic experience.

The installation consists of the projected videos and objects (lamps and tiles) that are placed on the floor. The tiles have a printed text, and decorations that resemble the mudéjar (Islamic) design. This Arabic influence can be found in Colombia due to Spanish colonization, and there is a strong presence of immigrants from Arab countries, more specifically Lebanon, Syria and Palestine, my grandparents' birth town.

On the wall, the videos projected will change according to the movement of the public. The spectator triggers one of six different videos when they stand in front of each of the tiles. The difference of light and shadow is calculated through a webcam input to determine where the person is standing. The videos are controlled using cyclops/ max/msp software.