Palimpsest
Overwriting of time
on a single continuous object, creating layering.
The lecture on palimpsest became another important turning point in my journey.
It offered a logical way to explore the uncovering of hidden layers, the building of new ones, and the creation of a continuous thread between past and present.
The idea of layering (revealing, concealing, rewriting) resonated immediately with the themes emerging in my practice.
I began experimenting with palimpsest through a digital medium. At this point, the concept was still very new to me and I hadn’t yet had the chance to read about its history or how it might function as a research method. Despite this, I found myself instinctively reaching for old photographs of my childhood home, especially the dark, hidden spaces in the cellar where parts of my history felt most concentrated. I digitally overlaid these images, and the outcome was unexpectedly powerful. The composite image carried a sense of secrecy, buried memories, and echoes of old times.
It felt right .
I had finally found a method that aligned with the deeper layers.
This experiment became starting point on for experiments and a way of working that made sense to me: a visual and conceptual tool for uncovering what is hidden, acknowledging what has been overwritten, and recognising that nothing is ever fully erased.
The palimpsest allowed me to explore memory not as a single image but as a layered structure.
I later used this digitally layered image in the digital fabric‑printing workshop, extending the palimpsest from screen to material. Even though digital printing, is something that should be in the centre of my textile interests, it has not delivered the outcomes i was hoping for. However experiencing what didn’t work, became just as valuable as the part of my experiments that created positive outcomes.
February
I began this experiment by creating a montage from old photographs, wool, and frottage (M. Ernst), centred on the willow tray.
The collage had a distinctly craft‑like, tactile quality, with visible layers and textures. However, when I placed it on the photocopier, the machine immediately flattened these layers. Fine details disappeared, tonal variations collapsed, and the image became a single surface rather than a layered object.
This initial loss of information first worried me, as layers i created were lost, however I wanted to see what would happen if the copy becomes the source. I photocopied the flattened image, then
I photocopied that copy, repeating the process twenty‑one times.
The results were unexpected. With each iteration, the image shifted further from its origin: colours reduced to a handful of tones, shapes blurred or merged, and certain elements vanished entirely. When I repeated the process in black and white, the transformation was even more dramatic.
The image became topographic. from the very beginning my intention was not to work with maps. This raised a question about pattern recognition: am I instinctively creating patterns, or am I recognising them only after they emerge?
This process became a metaphor for storytelling and memory.
When a story is told, it becomes a memory.
when it is told again, it is retold from that memory rather than from the original event. Each retelling shifts, simplifies, or alters the narrative.
The story changes, even when we believe we are repeating it faithfully.
Sutton’s theory of Distributed Representation helps explain this phenomenon. The brain does not store memories in isolated “files.” Instead, a memory is encoded as a pattern across many neurones, and those same neurones participate in countless other memories. Because these traces overlap, they are never static.
Each new experience subtly reshapes the network, altering the memory itself.
As Sutton notes, memory is “an intrinsically constructive process,”where each retelling becomes a new performance, making exact sameness impossible.
The photocopier enacted this principle visually. Each copy was a new “performance” of the image, altered by the machine’s own biases and limitations.
The process revealed that repetition does not preserve.
IT TRANSFORMS
The image, like a story, becomes a palimpsest — layered, eroded, and continually rewritten. tis experiment demonstrated that what remains is not a fixed record but a shifting accumulation of echoes, each shaped by the act of reproduction and remembering.
Experiment:
Tell me a story
22 February
Reflection
As part of my ongoing exploration of palimpsest, I set out to see whether I could recreate the visual outcome of the Tell Me a Story photocopy experiment through a different, more controlled method. Instead of relying on mechanical reproduction, I created a system with clear rules: a limited palette of four basic colours and a process of layering using thread to build the image.
The outcome was intriguing. The layered threads mimicked the visuals of the earlier photocopied images Yet working with thread introduced something new.
Thread is a line.
Could I retell the story not as an image, but as a line?
This shift felt significant. and just as with the previous photocopying experiment, i came to recognise that the essence was not the image itself, but the process of transformation and the way repetition alters meaning, the way layers accumulate, the way information is lost or reshaped. and this time, using thread made this process tactile and temporal. Each line carried duration, gesture, and intention.
The experiment revealed that the story I was trying to recreate was never purely visual.
It was structural.
By recognising the line as the fundamental unit of this transformation, I opened a new direction in this module.
How a story can be retold through linearity, through movement, through the physical act of drawing or stitching a line that carries memory forward.
This moment marked a transition from image‑based palimpsest to line‑based storytelling, aligning the work more closely with durée, trace, and the idea of a story as something that is always becoming.
During this module, I often found myself turning to mechanical writing when I felt stuck.
Certain words would sit at the front of my mind, almost insisting on being written down. I began repeating these words on the page, over and over.
Through this, repeated word would eventually spark an association with another word, and from that connection a short, meaningful sentence would often emerge. leading me to next project.
This process showed me that meaning can surface gradually, through repetition and patience.
The act of writing became a way of loosening thought and allowing my ideas to reveal themselves rather than forcing to surface forcefully.
