AT/ONE(MO)MENT

PAUL+A

With a contribution by painter Sue Williams

At/one(mo)ment

9 Photographic triptychs concerning sundry states of anxiety.

A performed collaboration by Paul+a  (with a contribution from painter Sue Williams).

This is a work concerning hidden histories and the nature of historiography. Through a series of vignettes we are introduced to the character of a young woman known only as Miss Paula. There exists a series of 18 portraits of a woman at a particular point in her personal history, or at 18 separate points in this same history. (punctuating these portraits are 9 colour images, which contain a different voice, a secret voice, a
lateral shift.)
The original photographs appear to us across time, they are black and white, scratched like used objects, and have the attributes of relics. The woman watches us from across the chasm, and as we stare back she slowly comes to life. Reconstituted or (re)collected as memories she sits on the edge of several potential stories and breathes her life back into us. Through her enigmatic presence we sense the others around her. The instant she resides in is a rickety bridge between some significant event and sublime potentialities that only we can imagine. Her’s is a mute testimony that hardly bears witness, the secret is on the edge of her lips but locked behind her eyes, and all we can do is open our hearts and reach out to her with our minds. Each one of us can save her if we can only answer the questions she poses, but to do this we must follow her to the edge of the abyss and look into the darkness. To possess her we must allow ourselves to be possessed, to be wrenched across the divide and dispel the distance between the two of us. Locked together we can regain time. Reconciliation and retribution are both possible in an instant; we can achieve the brief encounter — at/one(mo)ment . Atonement

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