Flowers Not Delivered
This critical research examines the fragility of human connection and the impermanence of memory, using the act of giving flowers to explore what resists preservation. Inspired by Derrida’s concept of absence, it challenges traditional documentation by embracing the incomplete and fragmented nature of experience. The transient gesture of offering flowers, embodied in ephemeral receipts, symbolizes the distortion of memory by time, perspective, and emotion. By prioritizing emotional resonance over factual accuracy, the project reimagines how archives could reflect the fluid and fragmented qualities of human experience. Through this lens, it celebrates the limitations of preservation as integral to understanding memory’s complexity and the archive.
The receipts themselves function as “counter-archives,” a fleeting record of an emotional exchange, embodying the tension between presence and absence. The act of erasing contextual details is not merely destructive but generative. It mirrors how emotion endures in memory even after its roots are covered and forgotten, leaving room for interpretation and encouraging viewers to assume what may have been erased and project their own emotional narratives onto the receipts. The lack of specific details challenges the viewer to engage with the receipts as fragmented, open-ended artefacts, reflecting on what is missing and how absence shapes meaning.
The project's inquiry redefines the archive as a site of generative erasure rather than a repository of permanence. By documenting absence and emphasising emotional content over reality, viewers are invited to interact with the artefacts as open-ended accounts, focussing on the fragility of human experience.
Research, Writing, Visual Manipulation
Skills: Photoshop/Photography