Stevie Rae Hope

My work investigates the failure of technology to document our lives accurately. In recent years, I have been mainly concerned with the challenges of documenting drag shows in ways that accurately reflect the atmosphere and mood central to these events. I am especially interested in the transient, biased and ever-changing nature of memories. I create images which have the feeling of partially-remembered events, through the use of a number of different processes and use of ephemera in my work. I am influenced by how we document and archive in both formal and informal settings. For example, how Facebook comments become part of the documentation of events, and how handwriting documenting factual information in family photo albums becomes an essential part of how we interpret them. I experiment with the boundaries of various technologies, and I have a long-standing interest in semi-automatic processes, such as scanning, risograph printing, and digital media. I am particularly interested in what happens when these kinds of technologies fail to do what they are supposed to and how to recreate these 'errors'.