mémoire involuntaire no.1

"mémoire involuntaire no. 1 is a vignette from the perspective of a small child, a 'raw memory' of playing with toys while the adults attend a church service. As the text progresses, select words are replaced, such that 'holy' light mutates to become 'dedicated,' 'holy' once again, then 'beatified'; 'adults' become 'suspects'; 'staring' becomes 'eyeballing,' 'eying,' 'peeking,' and so on. Objects are unmoored from place and time, making a concretely rendered scene instead impressionistic. As the text shifts, the memory itself shifts. What was for one brief moment a static and contained moment in time becomes diffuse, dynamic, and mutable. One can see traces of John Cayley's 'kinetic language painting' in this text, both visually and conceptually. While the former engages processes of signification and translation, the concern of mémoire involuntaire no. 1 is the operation of memory itself." -- from Electronic Literature Collection, Volume 2