CASSETTE

“Somewhere in the recent past I became fascinated with the notion of ‘parallel lives’. I learned that a ‘provisional life’ – as it is known in the world of psychology, called ‘Puer Aeturnus’ in the Jungian lexicon – is a sort of fictional life lived in the imagination alongside the actual. I’d been thinking about this from the point of view of the domestic, the everyday, and the ordinary: the place most of us reside, especially now during lengthy periods of lockdown, and particularly for those of us in my hometown of Melbourne.

These ideas were manifest in me long before the current pandemic, but considered profoundly since it began, bringing hard reality also into question: a before and an after. I’d begun to depict this in my mind as a cassette playing; two reels joined by a continuous tape that contains analogue signals on each side. Side A and Side B are being played concurrently, however only one is audible at any given time, and the other is playing – subconsciously perhaps – on the inverse, and in the reverse. For we also know that time is an illusion, and not linear, but circular and dynamic.

Cassette is a French word for a ‘small case’, a vessel containing belongings that tell stories about the person who owns them, much like analogue signals contained within the continuous thread of one’s life. Real or imaginary, side A or side B.”

– Bec Smith