Art-Memory: Part I

Today the 60s seem to be one of the most romantic eras. As we get closer the Voice of memories becomes quieter, stories are getting more personal, even intimate. "I want to sing and dance", "I rarely like myself". The voice tells us about personal things, experiences and events. How close do you need to get so the voice of other people could become your voice too?

Today we are so far from the 1960s that we can not fully see that world and feel that time without zooming-in. Thanks to our heroes we can zoom in, focus and extract details from the overall picture.

"Every person is a book". It is quite a cheesy line, however, it is possible to say that each hero of this project is not just a book, but an unread book, which is soon likely to disappear. I selected some quotes that I'd remembered the most from these interviews. Then I made book covers and placed lots of blank pages inside the books so that the heroes could make changes or write something down in order to pass on their stories to someone who are willing to learn them.

In the times of deficit in the USSR the attitude toward things was different. Things meant something bigger and weren't so impersonal. Many objects of that time have left their mark in a multilayer human memory and still keep both personal and universal stories of a whole generation.

They met in 1941 when her father took him to their family as an orphan. They traveled half the world while the borders were closed in the USSR. They had three children. He died but she carried on speaking with him. And after 7 years his soul returned and settled in inside her. “Now I’m never alone, and I never will be.” she says. More than a hundred years ago scientist Duncan McDougall found out that after death our body becomes 21 grams lighter. You can believe it or not but when we lose someone truly close, we want our body to become 21 grams heavier. And those who believe sometimes manage to keep these 21 grams in themselves. This sculpture is dedicated to the love story of Natalia Karpovna Struchkova and her husband.

Human self-awareness is formed like a natural landscape due to the gradual informational layers and their diffusion. In this work I would like to visualize this landscape of memory at the time of its transition between eras. 

Sometimes things and photos that we keep have no actual value at all but work as a key to opening the door to our past. Black-and-white photographs, dried flowers, hair are woven into the jute base. The work is not complete because the lives of the heroes go on and the real events and feelings of people expand the fabric of their memories. 

Each person is a time machine, you just need to be able to find the right button. The heroines of the film recreate their lives with words and hands through forming their inner portrait. Only for a few minutes we are given the opportunity to see them as they see themselves and as they really are. With the participation of Maria Zhestkova. Starring Alla Viktorovna Loskutova, Natalia Karpovna Struchkova and Svetlana Dmitrievna Sinitsina.

For a blind person to read this text in Braille, the letters must have volume but this work is deprived of it. This font is similarly  incomprehensible for a person with sight. Thus, the story of Alla Viktorovna, whose silhouette is glowing in the middle of the canvas, is impossible to be seen with complete clarity just like it is impossible to clearly see the person.