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M+, Hong Kong. Gift of an anonymous donor, 2018, © Nalini Malani
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Mediatheque
Nalini Malani 納里尼．馬拉尼
Memory: Record/Erase 記憶：記錄/刪除
1996
Memory: Record/Erase is Nalini Malani’s first use of stop-motion animation, a technique she has incorporated into the immersive video installations that characterise her practice. Thematically, the animation explores the construction and layering of memory suggested by the work’s title, while addressing the social status and roles of women.
The video opens with a scrolling press clipping about a woman caught impersonating her dead husband to keep a job as a factory guard. Malani pairs this with two paragraphs from the short story The Job by the German playwright Bertolt Brecht, the plot of which the news story echoes. The text suggests the destitution the woman returned to after losing the job, as one of ‘millions’ who are ‘lost forever’.
The work unfolds as a drawing that Malani continuously builds and effaces on a medium-brown surface. The sounds of breathing, children laughing, ambient noise, and music accompany the visuals. The drawings depict faces and bodies, animals, and shapes at different scales. At one moment, the drawing appears to become wet and its images begin to run. In its relentless change, the work suggests restlessness and the fragility of identity.
The video opens with a scrolling press clipping about a woman caught impersonating her dead husband to keep a job as a factory guard. Malani pairs this with two paragraphs from the short story The Job by the German playwright Bertolt Brecht, the plot of which the news story echoes. The text suggests the destitution the woman returned to after losing the job, as one of ‘millions’ who are ‘lost forever’.
The work unfolds as a drawing that Malani continuously builds and effaces on a medium-brown surface. The sounds of breathing, children laughing, ambient noise, and music accompany the visuals. The drawings depict faces and bodies, animals, and shapes at different scales. At one moment, the drawing appears to become wet and its images begin to run. In its relentless change, the work suggests restlessness and the fragility of identity.
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