Memory Palace Exhibition At The V&A

V&A Museum 9/11/13

The memory palace is an exhibition being held at the V&A museum it has been put together by sky arts imagination,  the exhibition brings together a new work of fiction by the author Hari Kunzru with 20 specially commissioned installations by graphic designers, illustrators and typographers to create a walk in book. The story is set in future London, hundreds of years after the worlds information infrastructure was wiped out by an immense magnetic storm, Technology and knowledge have been lost and nature has taken over the ruins of the old city. The narrator of the story is in prison and he has been accused of being a member of a banned sect. The narrator uses uses his prison cell as his 'memory palace' the location for all the rings he has remembered: corrupted fragments and misunderstood details of the things we may recognise from our time. The result is exhilarating. As well as crossing artistic boundaries by combining literature with art, the curators have transformed what it means to “read” a book and “see” an exhibition. You walk through the story, which is non-linear but somehow makes sense. Hands down one of the best exhibitions i have visited so far, i really enjoyed it.

Kessels, Eric (2013)

Dutch advertising doyen, Erik Kessels has piled up a great stack of newspapers and flyers into a temple-like structure in one corner, you can walk inside and in-between and it represents "In the time before the Withering, there was a religious practice called Recycling," reads the text. "It was a ceremony to celebrate the cycle of life and the turning of the seasons … Men and women would chant: I am not a plastic bag." Erik Kessels responded to two memory fragments that recall advertising and recycling, creating a giant palace made from recycled advertising leaflets. The multiple layers of the structure, made up of thousands of partially legible messages act as both a comment on the overarching story and our present reality where we are overwhelmed by colours, shapes, and images.

'At the height of the Booming, sign was so plentiful that it fell from the sky like rain. It rustled underfoot in autumn and rose and fluttered about the palaces and hospitals like apple blossom in spring. This was called advertising'.

Interpretation of The Wilding Author's Own(Posavec, Stefanie 2012)

The Booming  - The golden age before the Withering

Magnetisation - The magnetic storm that brought about the time of the withering

The Withering - The present time of decline

The Wilding - A time in the future when humans live in complete union with nature

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Here i have presented a sketch of the Wilding from my trip to the V&A and an interpretation of the wilding using the idea from my time capsule. I really liked the three steps that the artist used to present his story: plush areas slowly decreasing until completely gone, followed by an elegant majestic regrowth. The image i created shows the loose floorboard that i buried my time capsule in and the memories growing out and upwards from underneath.

Israeli typographer Oded Ezer has made eight short films that interpret some other playful definitions in the story. Screens show him eating and setting fire to individual letters, and mistranslating words using Google Translate – a technique Kunzru himself has used in previous work.

Bombing

A bomb or boom was energy in a small space. In the beginning there was a seed or a paradigm, which exploded, growing the towers and the hospitals and the bridges and pradas and ponzis. They used bombs to feed the great bubbles that surrounded the cities, protecting them from the dangers outside the box. The bubbles are said to have shimmered with such opulence that weak or downsize men were driven mad.

 Enterprize

The good things of the earth were distributed to all. There was such an abundance that even the lowliest was showered in riches. Enterprize was the wealth that came to the people of the Boomtime, just by virtue of entering or being born. From this wealth, the cleverest and most talented extracted content or happiness. The evil ones who brought about the Withering dissipated their enterprize in synergy, or wasteful lust.

Photoshop

A ritual conducted before going out into the world, in which the face and stomach are anointed with a powder called picksels.