From the moment we open our eyes, to the second they close, our perceptions are compiling a record. Our memory, unlike the film from a video camera, has lapses and faults, through its own subconscious hierarchy certain moments are preserved, some are forgotten and some are omitted. The works made for Pixel Asphyxial centre themselves around frames chosen by their author to live in perpetuity in the digital scape, to transcend the fallible memory and be bestowed a permanent space to hold as a refuge to retreat within. Susan Sontag makes the reflection in her seminal book On Photography (Sontag, 1977) that, “photographs are a way of imprisoning reality, one can’t possess reality, one can possess images, one can’t possess the present but one can possess the past”.
The exponential growth of imaging technology has carried us to a point of no return, the theory of ephemeralization is in full effect, with the potential to generate so much output from so little input the endpoint becomes blurry. Is it a desirable outcome to sacrifice our input? And what does that mean for the producers? Our everyday lives are ritualistically documented with 2.5 quintillion bytes of data created every day. The exponential curve of data creation feels like a tidal wave, far beyond a scale we can comprehend. We have been enabled to fill in the digital gaps, with the sublime and the banal, equally being added to the record of our existence. The images made by Callaghan are printed, cut and then re-woven subverting their progenitors and acknowledging the subjectivity and distortions the medium does so well to obscure.
“Welcome to your life
There's no turning back
Even while we sleep
We will find you
Acting on your best behaviour
Turn your back on Mother Nature
Everybody wants to rule the world
It's my own design
It's my own remorse
Help me to decide
Help me make the most
Of freedom and of pleasure
Nothing ever lasts forever
Everybody wants to rule the world”
-Everybody Wants to Rule The World (1985)
Tears for Fears