A film by Katy and Rebecca Beinart.
Confabulation is the confusion of imagination with memory, or the confused application of true memories. The objects, images and texts represent the collection of 54 stories of origin, family history and migration given to the artists on their market stall by passers-by. Some of the objects were donated by participants, while others selected by the artists to represent stories they were told. The whole becomes a confusion of truth and fiction, reflecting the impossible nature of defining and pinning down memory.
The artists' grandfather Michael Schriebman translated his name to Stanton, to assimilate and disguise his Jewish origin. He also adapted mechanisms and was an amateur inventor, following a period as a mechanic for the RAF in WW2. The artists discovered the instrument he called an 'aurophone' in his attic, and have adapted it to use 35mm film, being unsure of his original intention. As far as they could reconstruct its use, it translates text through the keypad to a musical score of punched holes, which then plays out through the music-box. They have 'translated' each of the 54 stories told by participants in the market stall residency, using 35mm film on which is a repeated photograph of the object associated with the story. The recorded sounds and images that the machine has produced reflect the artist's interest in attempts to classify, categorise and communicate different stories of migration and history. In this attempt, the machine renders these stories into forms of music and image that can no longer be traced to an origin, leaving only ghostly remnants.
