Theater of Memory / work in progress

Gordana and Marko Zivkovic
Portland, Oregon February 12, 2006

 

Ancient art of memory was a mnemotechnic that helped orators recall the subjects of their orations in proper order. The preliminary effort was to construct a series of " places " in imagination that will be used to hold the vivid images. Ancient guides recommend a real or imagined house with many distinct rooms, or a room with many distinct corners, alcoves, and other convenient image holders. In actual performance, the orator will then " walk " through the house or the room in a particular order and " see " in their appointed places, the imagined objects that will immediately bring to mind the subject to be recalled. This technique of memorization was later, during the Renaissance, used to construct whole theaters of memory, some of them built in actual reality, with huge number of spaces that would hold, and thus neatly classify all the existent knowledge. Such obsessive collections were often organized according to classificatory schemes of great complexity that hinged on the signs of zodiac. The images assumed the aspect of allegories, emblems, talismans, sigils that could channel corresponding astral qualities and the practical Art of Memory thus evolved into complex hermetic machines as with Giordano Bruno, or into precursors to Universal Encyclopedias.

This project leaves aside the practical mnemotechnics and the esoteric uses of the Art, and starts from the idea of personal, memorable spaces that could be concretely imagined whether they exist in reality or not. Our interest lies in the existence of such intimate spaces or places of memory in all our lives and in the various ways we can bring them to life by visualizing or materializing them. Furthermore, we are interested in the ways these spaces could be communicated to, and brought into relationship with spaces of others despite their intimate, personal character. We are intrigued by the question of what would happen if we tried to imagine what other people's spaces look and feel like. Finally, we assume that as we constitute each other's worlds, the intimate spaces of people who are part of our lives will intersect and correlate in interesting ways. Our Theatre of Memory will in fact be a Theatre of Crossed Memories, a meta-place where the alveoli of individual spaces will be connected to each other.

We ask you to engage in the following exercise:
You will get an envelope containing three pieces of paper and an envelope addressed to us.

  1. Provide an imprint of something uniquely and bodily yours. It could be a fingerprint, an imprint of your hand, or foot, or ear, an eyelash, an X-ray, the microscope specimen of your blood, your genotype, etc. It is not important that this be visually exciting, creative, striking, perfect, etc., just that it is unmistakably a unique imprint, a signature, a representative of you. And it has to fit into the envelope provided.
  2. Think of one or several places or spaces that are personally significant to you.
    • they could be real or imagined
    • they should have some sort of limits, or borders, a determinate extent (if immense, they should be " intimately immense " )
    • they should be memorable, characteristic, distinguishable from others
    • they could be places of possession, of experience, of memory, of hiding, of repose, they could be maps and trajectories not just enclosed spaces, they could be small or big, imagined or real, existing now, or extinct – they just have to be your spaces/places.
  3. Write a description, a story, a vignette that will conjure this place or space memorably, vividly (you can use the paper provided or any surface of your own but it has to fit into the envelope)

In addition to writing, you may (but don't have to) include drawings, photos, and various objects that relate to the place or space. Again, this should all fit into the envelope provided.

Your identifying mark, imprint, etc. will be incorporated in the exhibit but without your name. What you actually write and send may also (with your permission) be included into the exhibit, again without your name. Your name will be listed separately, in the catalog.

G. will immaginatively reconstruct your spaces from the words and objects you send her in various media, and arrange them in an installation we will jointly make.

We are planning to start working on the installation soon so it would be great if you can send us your contribution.

 

We hope this will be an exciting exercise for you, just as it is for us.