“What I find most striking about memory is not that it recounts the past – but that it feeds the present.”1
— Paul Valery
Memory facilitates a reciprocal relationship between past and present, in which they are constantly contaminating one another. Our relation to our memories of the past is always impacted by the present moment and our perception of the present moment is always shaped by the past. Objective Memory will create a dialogue between the works of a group of artists who share a common interest in the ability of objects to act as vessels for personal or collective memories and histories. The works will investigate both institutional and personal methods of recording and recounting past events. In placing the personal alongside the museological Objective Memory seeks to break down the hierarchy between what is perceived as historical fact and subjective experience.
- Valery in B. Cassiman and G. Ramael and J. Van Bellingen, ed., The Sublime Void: On the Memory of the Imagination (Antwerp: Antwerpen, 1993), 122.