Recorded Memories

The exhibition will showcase works (photographs, video works and installations) examining the issues of collective memory, different cultures of remembrance, memorial spaces and especially the role of images in these processes). The concept of the exhibition was developed by Florian Ebner and Constanze Wicke, while the exhibition in Belgrade is curated by Ana Panić, Museum of Yugoslav History curator. As Wicke puts it in her introduction published in the exhibition catalogue, “the selection of artistic works in this catalogue gives substance to the proposition that the camera media of photography, film and video have a special relationship to the past and are important means of conveying individual rituals of remembrance and cultures of collective memory. Its recording “gaze” transforms the present into the past and yet a narrative is always needed to give these fragments a point of view. In this sense, the artists are not far removed from historians, organising the sources from the past and translating them into a story.”

The succinctness of the exhibition title Recorded Memories illustrates the idea that there is a medium that can record memories and through which we assimilate them as our own. Photographic film (the memory chip of a digital camera) is, in fact, a sponge that soaks up the visible reality and locks it inside itself, transforming it into the past (history).

The exhibition is divided into six sections, each covering a different theme. The design of the exhibition provides a starting point, offering different perspectives from which to view the displayed works of art. Some of the approaches are defined by their topic, others by artistic attitude, still others by contemplating the medium they employ. Comparing the displayed works of art, the diversity of uses of photography becomes evident.

The exhibition has toured eight cities in Southeast Europe (Sarajevo, Rijeka, Sofia, Bucharest, Ankara, Nicosia, Thessaloniki and Athens). The Belgrade audience will have an opportunity to see it at the Museum of Yugoslav History from August 20 until October 17.

Guided tours of the exhibition led by artists, as well as  workshops intended for children and families will be held every Saturday at 1 pm. The panel discussion Art against Oblivion – Individual Memories of the Collective Past with the participation of Yiannis Toumazis, curator of the exhibition in Nicosia (Nicosia Municipal Arts Centre – NiMAC), Ana Panić, curator of the exhibition in Belgrade (Museum of Yugoslav History) and artists Marianna Christofides, Ana Adamović and Nikola Radić Lucati is scheduled for September 19.

Chief curator of the exhibition, Constanze Wicke was born 1983 in Leipzig. She studied museology/museum studies, aesthetics and art history in Leipzig and Braunschweig. Together with Florian Ebner, she curated the exhibition “Cairo. Open City – New Testimonies from an Ongoing Revolution”, which was held  at the Museum of Photography Braunschwei, g on the occasion of the 5^th European Month of Photography in Berlin in 2012, as well as at Museum Folkwang in Essen in 2013.