Reconstruction of the memory
This exhibition is shaped by the intersection of two planes: historical becoming and narrative. Historias fugaces [Fleeting Stories] brings these planes into question through that which needs to be recovered, the memory that rethinks the past, and the depiction of intimate moments. In other words, the links between imagination and memory, remembrance and image, where the narrative assigns times and speeds to the accumulation of events.
The works featured in this show provide evidence of our relationship with time, of collective amnesia and of our choices when remembering, while at once throwing light on how we recover ways of telling those stories. These videos are focused on short stories that are told using differing strategies.
Among the practices included are re-enactments of moments from family and collective history, minor gestures captured by the camera, archaeologies of the memory, an exploration of mental spaces and the mise en scène of ephemeral moments. Whether by working with the text or depicting absence, whether with urban landscapes that echo with the abstraction that condenses a specific reality or by highlighting personal temporalities, what is recovered here is the possibility of reinserting the subject and its agency within the historical becoming.
The recovery of personal memories with respect to grand narratives allows for an inscription of testimonial storytelling, for a reflection on collective events through the filter of family experiences and for an inclusion of forms of narrations from subordinate groups. By opening the possibility of enunciating from alterity, social tensions are underscored and intensified and the memories of conflict are polarised. It is precisely in these circumstances, when error and uncertainty enter onto the stage, that immediate reality determines the form and content of the works.
Starting from micro-histories and from manifold enunciations, these pieces emphasise the potential of art to drive forward narratives that are tangential to the hegemonic discourses built by the media. If presentation in real time mobilises the mediatic discourse disrupting memory and history, the poetic approach points to an exploration of what remains hidden in the folds of recollection and acts as a strategy to enable a re-inscription of signifiers. The fleetingness with which the novelty value of the latest news is forgotten is then reverted by means of resorting to an amplified moment as a way of triggering a thoughtful gaze.
In turn, the tensions between concealment and visibility are analysed. The videos include examinations of the limits of recording images and the linear construction of the stories they contain. Storytelling and recalling are underpinned as vital practices exercised in the action, while capturing an event with ethical and moral implications. In this sense, a distinction between remembering and memorialising is clarified, with the former standing in as an active exercise in the present, and the latter as a way of settling old scores with the past.
Contrasting with the flows of cultural amnesia, these works invite us to revisit the past, yet not from a desire to relive it, but to confront an interpretation of the numerous planes of the past. The collection of images as a whole reveals different intensities of the cultural memory, from the margins of the intimacy that comes into being in the midst of complex social and political landscapes.
Curated by: María del Carmen Carrión
Artists: Edgardo Aragón, Mariana Castillo Deball, Alejandro Cesarco, Wilson Díaz, Claudia Joskowicz, Marcellvs L, Óscar Muñoz, Miguel Ángel Ríos, Raquel Schefer, Melanie Smith con Rafael Ortega, Javier Téllez
Collaborating Patron:
