Saturday 1 August 2009

Memory-Maker (abridged) version 1. London Edition





The construction of autobiography through my practice works around the decision making process, through which I recognize the potential of particular systems that I use to narrate and document my everyday.
Thus, within the idea of collected souvenirs of the ordinary life, I have developed an interest in the archive as a metaphor to reflect the chaotic nature of memory, and also, as a statement of the difficulty and impossibility of carefully recording and classifying the always mutable subject of identity.
By classifying, indexing and labelling “the unimportant”, I have realised that this is a process that builds itself as it keeps unfolding by going back and constantly revising ideas and filling the gaps among the pieces that comprise an archive.
This project is titled Memory-Maker (abridged) version 1. London Edition, based on a site and time specific background (a year as a foreigner in London), an archive in the search of giving significance to memory.
It plays different games between reality and fantasy, in its urgency to hold or conquer the passing of time, exploring the ideas of the imminent disappearance or nothingness within its creation. This archive it’s a book and an installation that consists of three elements (a display on the wall, a box with adhesive copies of 45 images and blank forms bound in four books), a very low-tech system that exists to involve the audience in the process of collecting, organising or classifying my personal memories from 45 weeks of living and studying in London. On the wall, the images are displayed for the audience so they can browse before choosing from the box on the table. Several copies of each of the 45 images are arranged according the colour that dominates the picture, giving a guideline of the possible meanings and stories in the relation colour-emotion. After choosing a sample, the observer is invited to stick the image on a blank form, and then write an adjective, colour and month in order to create a collaborative sample book of shared memories and perceptions.
In this project I wanted to create a collective archive that relied on the making process, in the search for a personal artistic expression that also wants to be universal.
This archive is an experiment that has allowed my personal journals to evolve into a book-object that understands the endless possibilities of the inevitable subjectivity of recording memory within a more public context.



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