The White Album

HD Video with Sound
Full RT: 6 min 57 sec

The White Album is an experimental video made of purchased stock videos, an original voice over and downloaded sound effects; it explores the function and systematic approach to the use of stock images, their lack of narrative, and technology’s role in the construction of memories, personal histories and experience.

The digital archive of stock images is a structure that is internally divided with walls of coding, algorithms and key words. Due to its categorization and development, it prevents narrative, which, I argue, contradicts the original purpose of the archive’s goal of historical contextualization.

The White Album illustrates the illusion of the archive as an instrument of truth. By imposing a sequence and narration, the material can be turned into any story that the archivist chooses. This narrative, for example, doesn’t chronicle a history, but rather a fictionalized post-technological future, in which the protagonist struggles with her desire for memories.