Chris Rollen
Chris Rollen, Untitled (detail), 2003, text panels and audio CD, installation at Friar House, Newcastle upon Tyne
Chris Rollen employs the recollections of his parents to examine differences of memory and language. He asked his British mother and Dutch father to reminisce about how they first met whilst on holiday in Spain in 1973, their subsequent courtship and eventual marriage. Each was asked to tell this same story twice, once in his or her own language and once in the native language of their spouse. These four sound versions were recorded and transcribed in typed form in the language in which they were spoken.
Subsequently, these four verbal accounts were each translated from their first language to their second and also transcribed. The final installation therefore presents us with four sound (played simultaneously) and eight text variations of the same story. This results in a multi-layered work that both makes explicit and abstracts the differences it contains: from mother to father, from English to Dutch, from the spoken to the written word.
Chris Rollen, Christmas 1974, photograph
Chris Rollen, Untitled (detail), 2003, text panels and audio CD
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