Five Revolutionary Seconds IX

"The art works of Taylor-Wood makes us nervously aware of the fantasy of immortality that is summoned just as the camera shutter falls or the film proceeds through time or the record button is pressed. Almost as though we believe for a time that a body, poised to be permanently set in a flash of mechanical inspiration, might truly reveal an immortal mystery...Part of Taylor-Wood's contribution is to force us to realize that this history of photography, or film, or video, or digitalized images is always an unhappy display of lost idealized moments, lost idealized others, lost idealized ideals. The forever past is unrecoverable by such means. She offers us instead, the moment of narrative turn, when the story has partially unfolded but can be re-plotted, re-versioned, returned, re-proposed, repoken. This turn - this hinge to reality, rather than reality itself - -is the content of hope, if not optimism. (B. Ferguson, 'The Eyes and Ears of History' in Sam Taylor-Wood' Fondazione Prada, Milan 1999, pp. 19-20).