Memória is a project I’ve been continuosly working on for the last few months. The initial idea for it was triggered by Descartes’ notion that ‘We are the sum of our experiences’.
I pondered about this statement and what it meant to me. Looking into my personal experiences and memories, and gradually collecting them in a kind of ‘diary’, I came to the conclusion that a lot of the events/memories I believed to have helped shape my adult personality were stories my parents had told me. Real stories, mostly of things that had happened to them before I was even born.
I was intrigued by the effect of these memories I didn’t own on my own personality. I knew about these stories and even had images of the events floating in my head, whithout having even witnessed them. This phenomenon is what some call ‘Post-memory’, and has been closely linked to descendants of Holocaust victims and to the way stories related to the Holocaust were so present in their upbringing. My memories were far less traumatic, not even comparable to a tragic part of history like the Holocaust, but seemed to still classify as ‘Post-memory’.
After searching through these deeply personal stories of my parents, and asking them to record themselves speaking about them a few times, they became incredibly uncomfortable – about sharing their personal memories with complete strangers and being exposed in such a way. This discomfort was quickly passed onto me, as I increasingly felt guilty about exploring my parents’ private ‘intellectual’ property with almost no regards to their feelings.
Through this, a new concept was born within the project, and I developed this video. It became a visual exploration of the distortion and appropriation of memories and, through sound and repetition, an exploration of discomfort.
This is, still, a work in progress, as I feel the video still needs to be tweaked here and there. The colours aren’t quite right yet, but the general feeling is created. I wish to use this video, alongside other versions of it, and create a tryptich, through three separate projections onto different walls within one same dark room.
Memoria, Ines N.S. 2013
