Archives and Memory

Author: Maria-Luisa Holzmueller

Data handling and archival storage more and more help to work artistically in retrospect. What role do archives and memory play in contemporary art, especially in a time which is increasingly influenced by information technologies and data storage?

Hans-Ulrich Obrist, one of the world's most acknowledged curators, is moderating the panel.

On stage are Thomas Bayrle, a prominent German artist, Cao Fei, a Chinese artist working with video, theatre, performance and photography.

Taryn simon is showing some of her pictures.

Taryn's most famous work, "The Innocents", documents cases of wrongful conviction in the US and investigates photography's role in that process.

Simon: Photography influences our memory, sometimes in a wrong way.

Simon shows photos of wrongfully convicted people. In some cases the victims refused to accept that someone else is the guilty one, despite DNA proof, because they had looked so many years at the wrong picture of the convicted.

Bayrle has come on stage.

Bayrle talks about factory machines reminding him of the rosary because of their rhythm. He compares the stumping of the machines with the prayers of monks. In both cases it was a question of quantity.

People from different backgrounds bring knowledge together, but we can never have the same knowledge worldwide. There are lots of divisions.

Bayerle compares this system with a garden, which has millions of interactions.

Bayrle holds a bag with different things, for example a film loop. "The praying of the monks was the negative to the factory machines. We have to invest more in the darkroom"

Fei talks in Chinese about her last project: "Alternative journey", a Second Life project about China Tracy, her character in Second Life.

China Tracy was looking for a new lifestyle on Second Life for the first half year. She has experienced a lot, she went to Germany, has fought in war.

Fei spent 8-9 hours a day on Second Life. Reality and virtual reality mixed up for her. She opened an archive of Second Life and started collecting Second Life things. "It created a new memory for me, a very personal memory"

Fei shows her boyfriend on Second Life (a blond tall guy is seen on the presentation). Fei met the real person behind him in Los Angeles, a gray-haired man, 65 years old, a former member of the communist party.

Fei shows a video about her Second Life experience, where her Second Life character plays the guitar together with her boyfriend on the piano.

Fei now talks about virtual territory. There is no end to the Second Life area. "Globalisation is a life form, it brings our lives together."

"I create my own utopia world on Second Life. I am going to build a city next to water and the mountains, which is also part of Chinese philosophy. To build life close to nature. All the buildings in the city will get names of people. It should become a kind of paradise for people to live."

The city is based on Chinese reality, but it is also a way to escape reality.
"It is also a kind of personal memory and archive."

"It is a mixture of personal memories and public memories." The city consists of different really existing buildings beside fantasy buildings.

Its name: RMB City (a short movie about the city is shown, stars flying beside a panda bear, fire coming out of a chimney, a huge wheel turning, water around the houses, a huge tree.

Next speaker: Akram Zaatari, Lebanese artist whose work has been shown in Venice last year. He is the author of more than 40 videos. He is the co-founder of the Arab image foundation, a non-profit organization, specialized on collecting, studying and archiving the photographic history of the Middle East.

Zaatari: Digitizing photos is only a tool.

Zaatari: What do we do with the rising number of pictures around us? Do we need to keep everything? We try to be selective, we try to study the technics of photography from the late 19th century until now. How did photographers work etc.

He is talking about a project, a series of historic pictures from shopkeepers in Sida, a city 40 kilometers of Beirut, which the foundation published along with a city map.

Out of the collection of 41, five shops still belong to the same families. The photos are shown in the original places. More can be seen on www.fai.org.lb.

 

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