Absence as Presence

This was the final version of my college project video based on the theme of absence as presence.

In philosophy, ‘absence as presence’ is about fundamental states of being. The two terms are dependent on the notion of being. You can’t imagine ‘absence’ without being able to imagine ‘presence’. Many philosophers have pondered the question, including Jacques Derrida, who came up with the idea of ‘trace’ It is instinctive to think that something is either here or not, but Derrida attacked absolute presence and absence. He believed that things leave ‘traces’ of presence.

I studied absence, but with the hint of a former presence. For this project I looked at contemporary places where a person can leave a sense of presence or where we can detect a ‘trace’.

There are many moments of our daily lives that we take for granted, not realising that even though they may feel repetitive and dull, they won’t happen in exactly the same way again. We forget their dullness and look back fondly on them. Those moments leave their trace on the objects in our environment and our consciousness. We have a strong emotional bond to the many objects in our lives and we leave a trace of ourselves on these objects equally as they leave a trace on our memory.

I was interested in the concept of time lapse video where the brain fills in the gaps, through the way that it perceives what ‘should’ be there to create a narrative. My video reflects this as well as our relationship with the objects we have in our lives and the trace they leave on us.

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