Lethe

Lethe

The title, Lethe, derives from Greek mythology; the river Lethe flowed around the Cave of Hypnos and through the underworld, where all those who drank from it experienced complete forgetfulness.

This film displaces memory into water and ice, examining water as a refracted channel of memory and feeling, and how water itself is conveyed digitally. It is a dialogue between two places, Vancouver and Dublin, following an unidentified dweller of a watery space, who has been transported to an instability of thought and vision.

Landscapes of ice and dust, flowing water, sounds of murmured drowsy forgetting and wind singing through an old house.

This work has been included in the collection Displacements, alongside moving image works by 7 other Irish artists, curated by Richard Ashrowan for the Irish Artists’ Film Index 2020 annual screening. It was also screened at the Musée Nomade ConnectArt exhibition ‘L’Ouroboros’, at the Maison Symphonique, Montreal in October 2021 alongside three ‘Lethe’ cyanotype prints.

Lethe, HD video with sound, 07:17, 2020

Filmed in Vancouver, Canada and Dublin, Ireland

Narrator – Amanda Jane Porter