Participants entering the space encountered completed paintings from previous days hanging on brick walls. As they began to paint, cameras captured their movements and immediately projected them onto those same walls—live gestures overlaid on accumulated past work. Past, present, and projected-present coexisted simultaneously.

Past is Present is a site-specific video, sound, and painting installation created in collaboration with Sarah Conarro. After being invited by artist Ibrahim Mahama to Red Clay Studio in Tamale, Ghana, the duo developed an installation that unfolded over twenty-five days as community members painted on fifteen-foot paper banners while five closed-circuit video cameras captured their gestures in real-time. Seven projectors cast these live movements across all walls, layering present action onto the visual history of everyone who came before. Julian set up the cameras and projectors, edited footage each day, produced the song, and designed the 4-point surround soundscape.

The projection became both record and material—not an archive separate from the present, but an active participant in it. Viewers watched themselves painting now while surrounded by the visual echoes of those who had painted before, their bodies interfering with the projected memory of other bodies.

Old and new technologies collide throughout—CCTV cameras repurposed for connection, modern projectors throwing light through spaces designed around the sun's natural projection through Mahama's geometric brick cutouts, 4-point surround soundscape layering voices so present utterances mixed with echoes of past visits.

By projecting participants' images back onto them and the accumulated work, the installation invited viewers not only to watch but to become part of the shifting, ephemeral world—a space where audiences can lose track of what is real, what is remembered, and what is yet to come—creating openings to feel something essential about how individual gestures accumulate into collective memory.