Abuse of Perfect Data

Abuse of Perfect Data stems from an intimate urgency: to engage with memory not as a static archive, but as a dynamic space where inherited images resonate with the present. Working with 16mm film shot by my grandfather in the 1950s and ’60s, I sought an affective and artistic reclamation — deconstructing the family narrative to question our generational identity. The title is a provocation: it draws attention to how technologies archive, select, and reinterpret
memory. Even “perfect” data can be distorted — preservation does not guarantee neutrality. Through this work, the analog past becomes a living substance to explore fractures, absences, and the unresolved tensions of contemporary life. The project contrasts two temporalities: the slowness and tactility of film versus the visual overload of the digital present. It reflects on the emotional condition of my generation — marked by disorientation and a search for the anesthetization of anxiety in a world of constant exposure and hyperconnection.
To break the romanticism of the archival footage, I paired it with an artificial voice: fragile, childlike, and emotionally charged. A feminine voice that amplifies the gap between what is seen and what is felt — between inherited images and unspoken emotions.
In this sense, Abuse of Perfect Data becomes an attempt to reclaim the past from nostalgia and make it political again — a necessary, if impossible, dialogue between what we’ve inherited and what we still struggle to articulate.

— Viola Casartelli