LAZNIA 1 1998 - Roland Schefferski THE FRAGMENTARY NATURE OF MEMORY
17.10-10.12.1998
Curator: Aneta Szyłak
The project was displayed in an antique shop in Gdańsk, where, next to the crammed shelves of precious china, framed graphic prints and paintings, Schefferski presented passe-partouts being frames of photographs which had been cut out. The cutting out of the centre was an act directed against the “movement of memory”, the violence inflicted to the image. The artist related to the latest history of Gdańsk and Berlin – cities which had shared a similar fate. They were intended to be “erased from human memory”, with their “old” history replaced by the new, improved one. Whole streets and quarters vanished from the urban layout. Yet the total “wiping out” turned out to be impossible. Cities regenerate in an almost organic way: they grow again from the pieces preserving the memory of them. Even if a building had been demolished, then the foundations remained; the
image of the facade survived on a photo in an album, and the history of its construction – in the documents. There is always a trace left, the last stone or drawing, which stimulates the memory to start working.
Curator: Aneta Szyłak
The project was displayed in an antique shop in Gdańsk, where, next to the crammed shelves of precious china, framed graphic prints and paintings, Schefferski presented passe-partouts being frames of photographs which had been cut out. The cutting out of the centre was an act directed against the “movement of memory”, the violence inflicted to the image. The artist related to the latest history of Gdańsk and Berlin – cities which had shared a similar fate. They were intended to be “erased from human memory”, with their “old” history replaced by the new, improved one. Whole streets and quarters vanished from the urban layout. Yet the total “wiping out” turned out to be impossible. Cities regenerate in an almost organic way: they grow again from the pieces preserving the memory of them. Even if a building had been demolished, then the foundations remained; the
image of the facade survived on a photo in an album, and the history of its construction – in the documents. There is always a trace left, the last stone or drawing, which stimulates the memory to start working.
BIP