Asynchronous

Almost two years after my father died, I discovered by chance an old mobile phone several text messages he had sent to me during a period I was living abroad, messages I had long forgotten. Reading them repeatedly, I realized how technology had both supported our communication and quietly distorted the perception of distance. It created a connection that was immediate yet strangely disembodied, replacing the analog experience with a digital one.

Through Skype, I must have appeared closer indeed, almost tangible, as if distance could be skipped by a screen. Yet this closeness was deceptive, as it seemed to flatten the complexity of the situation we were living through. If I was unreachable for some reason, I didn’t simply feel far away to him — I vanished, slipping into the ether, swallowed by the night, as though absence equated to disappearance.

The concept of Asynchronous is about communication that is not shared in real time — messages that can be read long after they are sent, suspended between presence and delay. It speaks to the temporal disjunctions of connection: how words linger, how meaning shifts, how technology both bridges and widens the spaces between us.

This project has unfolded over several years, shaped by different moments, different media, and other events that crossed its path. It continues to evolve, just as the relationships and memories that initiated it continue to echo in new forms.

Different works have emerged as extensions of the book, expanding its conceptual and narrative threads beyond the printed page. They are not illustrations of Asynchronous, but further articulations of its concerns — reflections on presence, delay, and the traces left by communication. (On your behalf)

Setting the Horizon takes the form of a crafted collage built from a digital source: a sea–landscape from a stereoscopic shot whose two frames fail to align on the horizon line. It is presented as a laser print on paper, composed of A3 sheets glued directly onto the wall.

No Radio Sounds Here, Sister! is a digital décollage made from an analogue photograph, an image taken by my father himself in the 1970s. I digitally manipulated the photograph in order to isolate the main figure and place it within a landscape that no longer exists.

Together, these works extend the narrative of Asynchronous into different registers — material, visual, spatial — each exploring how communication persists, transforms, or disappears. They continue the conversation between presence and distance, between what is held and what inevitably slips away.