Our collaborative project, Postcards From Mental States started by
exchanging digital archives of travelling through America at times when
we had both felt overwhelmed; a simple realisation that we tend to
document difficult times in our lives. We create archives of ourselves
to revise at a time when we are less overwhelmed. We know we are very
easy to very easily overwhelmed. If whelm originally meant to overturn,
then a vessel is implied here. To overwhelm is to over-repeat turn a
vessel. Turning over an engine gets a motorboat started, and yet
overturning a boat pauses or stops the boat in the water. Exchanging our
personal archives felt like turning over an hourglass. The passage of
sand back and forth and back and forth is a soothing and subtle
reference to death. The pattern of sand grains runs on the hourglass.
JRL & PH
Nov. 2022
JRL & PH
Nov. 2022