Ropery (2016)

Like much of history, Ropery is out of date but not yet forgotten. The video is a spliced version of a ‘home movie’ of Chatham Historic Dockyard from 1988 that was found on YouTube.
Originally intended to play alongside Navigating the Archive (Version Three), the moments of black were synchronised to coincide with moments of memory from the film. Yet through development of further works, the placement of these two histories alongside each other no longer seemed as necessary, as they began to move fluidly within and throughout the six other films Hannah has created. As a result, Ropery runs out of sync with its original purpose, causing a delay between the connections it intended to highlight, not unlike a deteriorating reel of film that lags and falters in places.
Like a memory being recalled over and over, Ropery changes with each loop, becoming increasingly distant from its partner video. Now, it exists within its own history, frozen in a moment in time, captured in an archive of boxes.