In 2009 I found an audio cassette of a 1974 news broadcast recorded from the radio by one of my uncles at his home in Portugal. He had mailed this tape to my parents, immigrants living in California, to give them a sense of the revolution that had just occurred in their country of birth. The thirteen minute audio, included here in its entirety, relates the events of April 25, 1974 in an hour by hour narrative given by two reporters. I was initially taken by the degradation of the sound. Poor quality images and sounds in media had long interested me. I was also struck by the persistence of the narrative's linear hour by hour structure. I decided to break up that structure in order to explore ways in which we experience time, memory, and moments of profound change. Each of the twelve videos in this project contains excerpts from the narrative along with other sounds. Videos are meant to be played simultaneously online or in an installation format. Source material includes 8mm film from family archives, black and white hand developed super 8 film, original and found video, original and found sound. 5:00 minutes.
This project is not an attempt to depict the Portuguese revolution historically, however I did get interested in researching the history and events. Links to my research are below.