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PALIMPSEST

The Magic Slate

Surfaces upon which visual images are captured appear to act as windows on the past, through which one clearly sees and recognises a view of a person or place. Intact images such as these can bring an instant recognition of a sense of place or person, the ‘punctum’ of Roland Barthes’ ‘Camera Lucida’ ^[1], whereas others are viewed through the veil of time that here and there has erased parts perhaps from both memory and image. That veil is like a child’s plaything, the magic slate or, as Sigmund Freud called it, the ‘mystic writing pad’ ^[2]. A mystic writing pad, like a blackboard or slate, acts as a palimpsest. The pad’s transparent celluloid surface, upon which impressions are made, covers a layer of waxed paper over a wax base and text or images impressed upon it are transferred to the wax base below. What is inscribed can be erased by one sweep across the surface, wiped clean for reuse. However, although the impression appears to disappear when the band is drawn over the surface, it is in fact retained deep within the wax and is visible under certain conditions.

The pad still retains a trace; although all images and text appear to have been erased, some vestige of what was there before remains, a semblance of the past. Such are the images and text presented here, preserved in the layers, one behind the other. Each acts as a link to the other and creates its own narrative in the mind of the viewer. Together they begin to tell a story of another time and place and of an absent presence.

Linda Scott 2004