Footsteps

When I was living in Los Angeles I used to go regularly for hikes in Rogers State Park [...]

I would pass a hand-painted sign from the park rangers. Its words have always stayed with me: ‘Leave only footsteps and take only memories’ Footsteps (2022) is a 97-minute video installation made by Fiona Tan at the invitation of Amsterdam’s Eye Filmmuseum. The work combines archival film footage from the museum’s collection with a voiceover of letters written to the artist by her father while she was a student in the late 1980s.

Tan added a soundtrack to the film material that reflects the action and events taking place, bringing the century-old footage to life. As we listen to the artist's father (voiced by actor Ian Henderson) write about the fall of the Soviet Union, civil unrest in China, and the everyday lives of the artist’s relatives in Australia, we watch men and women toil the land and harvest the sea, we see cows in the field and old men smoking pipes, sailboats moving across the horizon, and the emergence of industry and urbanisation.