Memory Palace
A collaborative and Interdisciplinary exhibition
2018
What is the role of the unconscious mind in creative processes?
What are the possibilities of creating artworks that are devoid of critical thought?
Relying on the improvised, instinctual and illogical, the Memory Palace searched for
the potential in bringing together different art forms and creating collaboratively and intuitively.
Memory Palace was a collaborative project that brought together 7 international artists from various disciplines. At its core, the project questioned the source, forms and limits of human creativity, and—first and foremost—a quest to experiment with the creative processes. The project was initiated by the Scottish artist-run collective Captain Lightfoot (Anneli Holmstrom, Emma Pratt and Kadie Salmon). They invited four students from the Academy of Performing Arts in Prague: Christian Henninger (photography) , Nitish Jain (scenography) , Bára Anna Stejskalová (animation) and Eva Urbanová (choreography) for a period of collective research, creation and exhibition between April - October 2018.
The collective artistic research drew inspiration from Dada’s
rupturing of the link between art and the artist’s controlled
decision making; Surrealism’s automatic writing and focus on the
unconscious; Moholy-Nagy’s idea of the art object as the
catalyst of an interactive event; and David Lynch’s technique of "transcendental meditation”.
The artworks on show consisted of a series of fictive audios,
photo montages and assemblages of found materials and objects
collected by the individual artists during their meditative walks.
The architecture of the exhibition was structured as a
“memory palace“—an imaginary location in your mind where
you can store mnemonic images. It followed a path created
in order to store creative inspiration, memories and visual imagery.
Some artistic processes that were followed and the resulting creations are elaborated below.
Exhibited at:
Galerie AMU, Prague.
Exhibition concept and curation:
Captain Lightfoot.
Co-curator:
Eliška Žáková.
Exhibiting Artists:
Kadie Salmon, Emma Pratt, Anneli Holmstrom, Christian Henninger, Bára Anna Stejskalová, Eva Urbanová and Nitish Jain.
Supported by:
Academy of Performing Arts in Prague, Ministry of Culture Czech Republic, STEP Beyond (European Cultural Foundation).
Photo Montages
Using one 35mm film camera and one spool of black and white film, the artists each took it in turn to photograph their environment and daily lives in their respective countries. This film was rewound and then passed on to the next artist to use; going forward, back and forward again and again until all artists had documented their lives individually without the others present. It is only in the resulting artworks; nine multiple exposure images, that these solo documentations overlap one another; physically exposing the shared nature of the experience. For the exhibition, each image was screen printed on specific surfaces and objects to bring attention to the tactile, three dimensional and collaborative nature of the work. The materials ranged from sandpaper, paver stones, metal sheets, to found pieces of plexiglass , fabric etc. Each material became an artistic collaborator in its own capacity; their ink-retaining capacity and behaviour yielding surprising results.
Assemblage via meditation
Each artist in their own country and environment did
twenty minute walks scouting for materials and objects.
The rule was to walk twenty paces at a time, then change
direction; all whilst listening to a shared meditation
soundtrack. During this relaxed state of mind, walking
in environments which included Spanish beach resorts, childhood bedrooms,
bustling city centres, junkyards and woodland, the artists collected found objects.
Returning to the studio they then transformed these
objects into assemblages, relying on intuition and
avoiding critical thought or analysis.
The assemblages are not artworks that conform to a formal
language of fine art but instead exist more like artefacts;
tools to tell a story. Each artist then gave their assemblages
a title. It is the title that applies meaning to the object; an
interpretation or story. However the interpretation and story
does not end with the maker; instead each object has multiple
interpretations, bestowed on it by the collective. We revealed
our assemblages to our co-artists only a day prior to the exhibition
and, using the tool of Automatic-writing-in-60-seconds, each artist
gave a title to each other's object(s). When read together,
the titles make haikus, short stories or fragments of dreams,
the interpretation left to the imagination of the reader.
Automatic Writing and Audio Works:
At a pre-decided date and time, all the participants of
the collaboration interrupted their daily goings to write
automatically for 5 minutes-allowing the unconscious mind
to fill the minutes. Located in different time-zones,
this exercise varied from 6pm some days to 3am on others;
writing in the middle of a restaurant, a house party or
concert or waking in the middle of the night- still in
a dream state of mind. With each artist, the texts reveal
a rambling stream of words and sentences, where the
nonsensical is crudely interrupted by the intrusion
of the conscious voice; questions, self-reflection
and awareness. Here the unconscious and conscious
mind overlap; feeding one another through creative process.
An important part of this writing process was
the feeling of being connected with the other
participants and to know that they were also
doing this at the same time in their respective
countries. This body of automatic writings was
then shared; with each participant selecting
3 lines from each other's writings. Each artist
then re-structured these lines to create their
own version of the collective memory/narrative.
These narratives now exist for the viewer
as recorded audios. Each audio was housed
in an individual 'tent' like structure
constructed by each artist. Here the
viewer was invited to enter an intimate
space, shut off from the gallery surroundings.
Listening on headphones, this narrative unravels
and memories are conjured; emphasised by sounds,
tactility and smells such as rain or a crackling fire.
Check out our tent
Belly of the Two-Headed Beast.
Pictures: Oskar Helcel. Graphic design: Jan Slabihoudek. Sound design: Robin Holmberg. Sound Recordings:Vojtěch Zavadil. Special thanks to: Matěj Šenkyřík (technical assistance), Viktor Dedek (set-up). Text by: Nitish Jain with acknowledgement to Eliška Žaková and Captain Lightfoot for permission to quote from the GAMU press release and the exhibition handout.
