Containers of remembering:

the creative practices of collecting memory objects

Louise Bliss

February 2014

Contemporary Fine Art BA (Hons) Visual Culture: Dissertation U20967

Contents

Illustrations …………………………………………………………… Page 1

Acknowledgements …………………………………………………………… Page 3

Introduction …………………………………………………………… Page 4

1 - Differing Strategies ………………………………………………………… Page 10

2 - Forgetting and Remembering ……………………………………….. Page 15

3 - Emptiness and Absence …………………………………………………. Page 21

4 - Narrative Attachments …………………………………………………… Page 28

5 - The Attic, The Suitcase, The Garment ………….………………… Page 37

Conclusion …………………………………………………………… Page 42

Appendices

Appendix A …………………………………………………………… Page 43

Appendix B …………………………………………………………… Page 45

Appendix C …………………………………………………………… Page 46

Bibliography …………………………………………………………… Page 48

1

Illustrations

Figure 1 Page 6

Christian Boltanski - La vie impossible de C. B., 2001. Installation view and detail. R. Beil (Ed.).

Boltanski: Time. Ostfildern: Hatje Kantz, p.86.

Figure 2 Page 6

Interior view of Art Gallery showing a glass cabinet displaying pottery. Undated. Cabinet was

made by John Curtis & Son Ltd., Museum Showcase Makers, of York Road, Leeds. © Leeds

Library & Information Service. Retrieved from:

http://www.leodis.net/display.aspx?resourceIdentifier=2009227_168523

Figure 3 Page 11

Christian Boltanski - Les archives de CB 1965-1988. 1989. Installation with light. Metal,

photographs, lamps, electric wire. 270 x 693 x 35.5 cm. © Agadp, Paris 2007. Retrieved from:

http://mediation.centrepompidou.fr/education/ressources/ENS-Boltanski_en/popup08.html

Figure 4 Page 13

Screen shot from Andy Warhol Museum website. © The Andy Warhol Museum 2005. Retrieved

from: http://www.warhol.org/tc21/main.html

Figure 5 Page 15

Louise Bourgeois - Red Room (Child). 1994. Mixed media. 210.8 x 353 x 274.3 cm. Collection

Musee d'art contemporain de Montreal. Photo: Marcus Schneider. © The Estate of Louise

Bourgeois. Retrieved from: http://0.tqn.com/d/arthistory/1/0/f/-/1/bourgeois_retro_13.jpg

Figure 6 Page 20

William Christenberry - House Painted “Only as High as One could Reach”. Greensboro,

Alabama, 1993-94. S. Lange (Ed.). (2008). William Christenberry: Working From Memory.

Gottingen: Steidl, p.49.

Figure 7 Page 22

Tracy Emin - Everyone I Have Ever Slept With 1963-95. 1995. Appliqued tent, mattress and

light. 122 x 245 x 215. Brown, N. (2006). Tracy Emin. London: Tate Publishing, p.82.

Figure 8 Page 23

Christian Boltanski - Réserves: La Fete de Pourim. 1989. Retrieved from:

http://textessurlesartsplastiques2.files.wordpress.com/2012/07/boltanski-fc3aate-de-

pourim1989.jpg

2

Figure 9 Page 24

Shoes that belonged to people derported to Auschwitz for extermination. Photo: Pawel Sawicki.

© Auschwitz-Birkenau State Museum. Retrieved from:

http://en.auschwitz.org/m/index.php?option=com_ponygallery&func=detail&id=869&Itemid=3

Figure 10 Page 29

Isabel Greenberg - Illustration (Untitled). 2013. Retrieved from:

https://twitter.com/galleryDSS/status/346606930044801024

Figure 11 Page 30

Giulio Camillo’s Memory Theatre. L'idea del Theatro, 1550. Retrieved from:

http://bourbakisme.blogspot.co.uk/2011/05/mp-memory-palace-giulio-camillo-lidea.html

Figure 12 Page 31

Isabel Greenberg - Illustration (Untitled) details. 2013. Retrieved from:

https://twitter.com/galleryDSS/status/346606930044801024

Figure 13 Page 34

Erik Kessels - Anonymous ‘cut out’ photograph. 2013. Retrieved from:

http://lightbox.time.com/2013/09/04/the-vanishing-art-of-the-family-photo-album/#1

Figure 14 Page 39

Jeanette Mongomery Barron - Chester Weinberg, fur coat. 2009. Montgomery Barron, J. (2009).

My Mother’s Clothes. New York: Welcome Books, p.8.

Figure 15 Page 43

William Christenberry - The house built by the man with one arm. Near Greensboro, Alabama.

1980. S. Lange (Ed.). (2008). William Christenberry: Working From Memory. Gottingen: Steidl,

p.46.

3

Acknowledgements

I would like to acknowledge those who have supported me variously in the creation of

this paper. Firstly, my family and old friends, who have inspired my love of

photography, and a good story, through the sharing of memories – they are a precious

asset. In particular, I am grateful to my children, Theo and Florence, for their

forbearance and patience, and to my parents, Barry and Christine, for their personal

and practical input, as well as their trust in my ability. Secondly, I appreciate each

member of staff of University of Portsmouth who has helped me move this project

along, but specifically my tutor, Dr Marius Kwint, for his encouragement and invaluable

feedback, and Greta Friggens for her expert advice. Finally I would like to thank my

sister, Dr Jo Szram, for her scientific eye and the time she offered me, despite her

formidable commitments.

4

Introduction

Through my creative practice I have been exploring themes of memory, death,

collecting and preservation. My research has highlighted a trend in the expressive arts

towards dealing with these subjects using the container as a central motif. Studying

the varied practices of artists, photographers, writers and philosophers, this common

phenomenon has emerged, and I intend to examine how this type of work

communicates to, and resonates with, its audience.

My interest in this area of study has grown out of my earlier, broader experiences as

the daughter of a collector, creative expression through my own archival practice, and

the recognition of similar tendencies in the art and literature I have found engaging.

There has existed within my circle of family and friends a strong culture of

reminiscence, using mementoes, photography, and the telling of stories to share

memories of people, places and shared experiences. The materialization of memory by

way of attachment to objects is key in this investigation, as is the observation that the

concept of memory has often been figured in terms of a container of objects.

I will be reflecting upon the work of particular artists and writers and focussing on

certain theories and philosophies which help to explain how they communicate often

intangible aspects of mortality and memory. These include Christian Boltanski, Tracy

Emin, Louise Bourgeois and William Christenberry, whose expression encompasses

issues such as collective mourning, personal loss, cultural/familial identity, and

5

autobiographical narrative. The format through which these themes are conveyed

ranges from photographs and books to installations and archives, and in each instance

the metaphorical container appears to be their conduit.

“We think with the objects we love; we love the objects we think with.”

The words of Sherry Turkle in her introduction to ‘Evocative Objects’, a book of

collected reflections on the material things with which we associate, strike a chord.

(2011, p.5). She argues that objects serve a purpose beyond that of their original use,

by way of the emotional relationships we form with them. Serving as valuable tools

they help shape our identity and connection with people, places and culture. Andrew

Jones recognises this relationship when he states that “[a]s physical materials, artefacts

provide an authentic link to the past and as such can be re-experienced.” (2007, p.3).

He refers to archaeological materials used for reconnecting with past cultures, but

investigates and applies relevant theories and concepts to individual, subjective

memory. He concludes that “objects provide the ground for humans to experience

memory” through their ability to underpin and fix physical activities, affording an index

to past events. (Jones, 2007, pp.22-26). If we think in this way about the material

things we keep, both as societies and individuals, they become collections of memory-

objects. Collections, by their very nature, require containment in order to be described

as such. Whether it is historical artefacts within the walls of a museum, personal

keepsakes in an old box or a prized series of valuable works of art in a wealthy

collector’s cabinet. I intend to illustrate their similarities, comparing them to the

selected works which seem to draw on this familiar system of archiving.

The following illustrations typify some striking visual affinities.

6

Fig. 1. Christian Boltanski – La vie impossible de C.B., 2001

Fig. 2. Interior view of Art Gallery showing a glass cabinet displaying pottery

Chapters 1 to 3 will examine examples of work by artists which appear to have been

created with conscious reference to these structures, while chapters 4 and 5 discuss

work that seems to have materialized more as a consequence of its creator’s impulse to

express these issues.

7

In his essay entitled ‘The System of Collecting’, Jean Baudrillard theorizes the human

urge to collect, recognising that objects can be invested with profound meanings

produced by ownership. Once an object is divested of its use through the act of

collection, it moves from being utilised to being possessed. He asserts that it is through

this process that the object, “a resistant material body,” becomes “a thing whose

meaning is governed by myself alone […] the object of my passion.” (Baudrillard,

1994/1968, p.7). He proceeds to question whether the objects selected by an

individual are able to constitute a valid means of external communication. He suggests

that they may be a mere discourse with oneself, as in the classic profile of an

introverted, perhaps socially alienated collector, unable to tear themselves away from

the familiar psychological language of their collection. (Baudrillard, 1994/1968). I

cannot dispute this claim as it relates to the example of the private collector -

psychological arguments falling outside the scope of this paper - but I will demonstrate

how artists can express a broad range of emotions and ideas to others by making their

‘collections’ public.

Historically, philosophers have figured memory in a variety of ways, conjuring the

tangible to represent what is ultimately a transient entity. In her work ‘The Art of

Memory’, Frances Yates describes an early attempt to create a physical space to enable

the reliable recollection of knowledge by architect Giulio Camillo (born 1480). He

designed and built a small wooden structure known as a ‘Memory Theatre’ which was

based on classical principles of art and memory. The building represented “the order of

eternal truth; in it the universe will be remembered through organic association of all its

parts with their underlying order.” (Yates, 1966. p.138). The Memory Theatre provided

a space in which an individual could embody their memories, solidifying them by placing

8

them in specific places, cementing them in the mind. Physical containers of memories

manifest as museums, national memorials and art galleries (as collections of ‘important’

social/cultural objects), attics, domestic display cabinets and keepsake boxes (as

collections of ‘valuable’ personal objects).

The question of why humans feel compelled to collect is addressed by

Baudrillard, who explains it as an expression of a fundamental fear of our mortality. He

suggests that the security gained by collecting a series is driven by the urge to survive

ones own death. “We might be prompted to say that the object is that through which

we mourn for ourselves, in the sense that, in so far as we truly possess it, the object

stands for our own death, symbolically transcended.” (Baudrillard, 1994/1968, p.17).

On the subject of mortality and its relationship with the material, Hallam and Hockey

assert that metaphor is a useful way of dealing with such incomprehensible themes as

death, memory and loss. Because they can be inconceivable, “recourse to metaphor

has provided a means by which they are made accessible.” (Hallam and Hockey, 2001,

p.23).

It is important to explain why metaphor is so pertinent, as it helps to illustrate how the

works I will discuss communicate so effectively, on an almost unconscious level. In

their article ‘Conceptual Metaphor in Everyday Language’, Lakoff and Johnson boldly

propose that metaphor forms the basis of our understanding of all knowledge other

than that which we know to be truly corporeal. (1980, pp.453-486). This information

about our somatic environment as experienced by our bodies includes fundamental

facts such as up/down, light/dark, in/out, warm/cold. Metaphor provides the

framework, they argue, for understanding everything else that can be described as a

9

concept or idea, and is as pervasive in everyday existence as it is in language. Further,

it allows us to imagine abstractions through the use of figurative comparisons (beyond

the obvious like ‘love is blind’), metaphorical concepts being extended past the literal to

the poetic and expressive. “Thus, if ideas are objects, we can dress them up in fancy

clothes, juggle them, line them up nice and neat, etc.” (Lakoff and Johnson, 1980,

p.460). Different types of metaphor are identified and explained, but it is their citing of

Michael Reddy’s subtle but complex ‘conduit metaphor’ referring to language about

language, which is so relevant to this paper.

“(i) ideas (or meanings) are objects; (ii) linguistic expressions are containers; (iii)

communication is sending - the speaker puts ideas (objects) into words

(containers) and sends them (along a conduit) to a hearer who takes the idea-

objects out of the word-containers.”

With regards to language, this is illustrated in the expressions “Try to pack more

thought into fewer words” or “It's hard to get that idea across to him”, where one

aspect of the concept can be hidden within another, and may not even appear

metaphorical at all. (Lakoff and Johnson, 1980, pp.458-59). As visual languages like

art and photography can often be less explicit, this presents less of a problem, but the

main reason that this model so aptly applies is the expedient use of the words ‘objects’

and ‘containers’.

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Chapter 1 - Differing Strategies Boltanski/Warhol

Two artists who have used personal collections and archives in specific pieces of work

are Christian Boltanski and Andy Warhol, albeit in contrasting ways. Boltanski was born

in Paris (1944) to a Jewish father and a Christian mother, both immigrants, who

divorced before the outbreak of World War II, hoping to protect the family from Nazi

persecution. Boltanski is best known for his large-scale installations and biographical

photographic collections. Providing a sketch of his approach, Kemme describes his

work as “[c]ombining irony and pathos, his art reflects upon childhood, memory,

identity, guilt, and death. It translates personal existential experience into universal

forms of remembrance within the collective memory.” (2006, p.128).

I have come to notice Boltanski’s use of collections, such as family archives,

photographs and clothing, and the prevalence of their containment. The way he

presents his work, as multiples of apparently random indexical found items, often

devoid of context, nevertheless conveys particular associations to the audience. Works

such as ‘La réserve des Suisses morts’, (which consisted of stacks of identical, aged tins

with portraits cut from Swiss obituaries stuck on the front), and ‘Canada’ (a huge

installation of thousands of second-hand clothes hung floor to ceiling, completely

covering the walls), use items with no specific identity, but which imply our familiar

memorial practice of keeping and containing meaningful objects. One of his key works

in this mode is ‘Les archives de CB 1965-1988’, which was made up of 646 rusty,

unmarked biscuit boxes containing photographs, personal papers and documents from

his home and studio. As the artist himself states “It was a way to throw them away

11

and not to put them in the garbage.” (Palmer Albers, 2011, p.257). This was

purchased by the Musee National d’Art Moderne, Paris, where Boltanski’s accumulated

archive has been exhibited and will be preserved. Lynn Gumpert notes how his

“irrepressibly ambivalent and contradictory spirit was in evidence” in the making and

sale of this piece, in a single act of conservation and erasure. “True, the papers and

ephemera were saved in an archive, but lacking any index or order, it is, practically

speaking, unusable.” (1994, p.140).

Fig. 3. Christian Boltanski - Les archives de C.B. 1965-1988

‘Les archives…’ brings to mind a similar practice indulged in by Andy Warhol (born

1928, USA) but apparently for altogether different purposes. Warhol, an obsessive

collector, began in 1974 filling cardboard boxes with random detritus from his office

and studio, sending them to a storage facility. He continued this practice for the rest of

his life, and in 1994 The Andy Warhol Museum began to examine this archive of 612

‘Time Capsules’. The fact that this personal collection remained largely unknown until

Warhol’s death in 1987, suggests Boltanski’s piece (and its sale) was a direct response

to the discovery of the Time Capsules, and may be a playful comment on the celebrity

12

status of certain contemporary artists. The similarities between their form, the number

of boxes in each archive, and the dates they were discovered and produced

respectively, imply this synopsis. The idea that Warhol was a self-conscious person,

and at the same time an artist who openly indulged in creative commercial strategies, is

not an unfamiliar one. Further, he recognised their potential market value shortly

before his death, as Ronald Jones points out in his article on whether the Time

Capsules qualify as art or merely artefact. From Warhol’s diary: “took a few time

capsule boxes to the office. They are fun – when you go through them there’s things

you really don’t want to give up. Some day I’ll sell them for $4000 or $5000. I used to

think $100, but now that’s my new price.” (Jones, 2004). On conscious strategies such

as these, Richard Schusterman asserts, the drive for “artistic self-fashioning through

aesthetic experience remains irrepressible, even if displaced from the traditional frame

of institutional fine art and threatened by the withering whirl and grind of post-modern

life.” (2000, p.8).

‘Les Archives…’ is currently on display at Centre Pompidou, Paris, as part of their

permanent collection. The tins are piled high and inaccessible to audience and

researcher alike, confirming what Gumpert anticipated about the potential value of

Boltanski’s personal archive as a resource for art historians and archivists. Conversely,

Warhol’s Time Capsules have been opened and studied by the Warhol Museum, which

is in the process of cataloguing its entire contents. As stated in their online archive

page, this is a formidable feat but the end result will be a complete “collection database

with thousands of searchable records.” (Warhol Museum, 2014)

13

Fig. 4. Screen shot from Andy Warhol Museum website

Their website even features an interactive element called ‘Explore Time Capsule 21’

where one can find a complete inventory of this particular box, as well as study a

selection of over 50 objects through detailed descriptions, photographs and additional

resources. This constitutes a small but impressive effort towards what will presumably

be the most comprehensive catalogue of the collection of a contemporary artist, and

one which carries his autobiographical imprint. It appears that Andy Warhol, with his

self-fashioned public persona and predilection for preserving ephemera, has managed

to achieve the goal towards which his apparently involuntary urge was driving him: to

outlive himself.

14

Kate Palmer Albers describes Boltanski’s archive as an “invisible resume” owing to the

fact that at the time of the exhibition of the work in 2005 “no-one at the [Musee

National d’Art Moderne] had yet opened the boxes, and no catalog of their contents

existed.” (2011, p.252). Coupled with her subsequent discovery that each box only

contains a couple of objects, this raises disparity between the two works, as it appears

that Boltanski’s piece is more about archive than existing as archive. Its limited

accessibility and autobiographical scope suggest that the conscious strategy used in this

case is the language of the archive in order to make a statement about the nature of

collecting, and perhaps the futility of it. As Palmer Albers says, “the work should

operate purely conceptually, which is appropriate since nearly everyone who encounters

it in the gallery will not look at the contents inside” (2011, p.261).

15

Chapter 2 - Forgetting and Remembering Bourgeois/Christenberry

An artist famous for strong autobiographical themes and instinctive and diverse use of

media is Louise Bourgeois (born 1911, France). Internationally renowned and said to

be the founder of a confessional style of art, she produced pieces based upon her

personal emotional memory. I will look at a series of mixed media installation work

called ‘Cells’. Constructed in various forms to resemble interiors with symbolic props

and sculptures inside, they used the idea of containment to convey feelings of fear and

pain. Bourgeois’ work often dealt with traumatic childhood memories and her sense of

place within the family unit, using her practice to exorcise psychological demons,

despite asserting that it did not enable her to forget them. She addresses their

persistence in her own words: “When does the physical become emotional? It’s a circle

going round and round. Pain cannot be relieved. It can’t be eliminated or suppressed.

It’s here to stay.” (Gardner, 1994, p.43)

Fig. 5. Louise Bourgeois - Red Room (Child)

16

Many of the Cells included glass and mirrors, allowing the viewer to see their reflection

within the space. This may be intended as a way to view these intensely personal

interiors from a safe distance without having to physically enter them. ‘Red Room

(Child)’’, a circular enclosure made from doors which cannot be opened, is populated by

specifically arranged items (Bourgeois’ parents ran a tapestry workshop in her

childhood), as well as many small sculptures and found objects. These act as memory

markers, and it is clear that they have been employed for their particular meanings and

associations, both to the artist and the viewers of the work. More broadly, the way

they have been organised, located and enclosed within the cell is evocative of

metaphorical structures frequently utilized when attempting to materialize the nature of

memories and their interrelatedness.

The literal metaphor provided by Bourgeois’ use of the term ‘cell’ is glaring - its most

prevalent association with a small room in a prison. However, further possibilities

become apparent when its various definitions are examined. It can be used to describe

a small unit of a larger structure (suggesting a series, or collection), as well as a secret,

typically subversive, group. The biological use of the word ‘cell’ was adopted

presumably for its metaphorical potential to describe the concept of a container, and a

unit of an organism (Oxford Dictionaries, 2014). Incidentally, the scientific use of

metaphor as an instructional tool to explain abstract ideas is well recognised. Studies

have even suggested that it may not be possible to teach scientific concepts effectively

without recourse to metaphor (Niebert, Marsch & Treagust, 2012, p.849).

17

Medieval memory techniques (such as the aforementioned Memory Theatre) may also

have informed Bourgeois’ use of the storage room metaphor. Hallam and Hockey refer

to the way it “provided connections between memory, systemized spaces and orderly

sets of objects” thus establishing a network of associations “crucial in memory

techniques.” The mirrors also implicate the viewer in the recollection and sharing of

memories, providing an immediate, lived experience through the rendering of a physical

reflection. By visualizing oneself within a space designed for the act of remembering,

past experiences were recalled “in ways that entailed the mobilisation of emotion and

imagination […] which set up spacial and visual associations” resulting in “a rich and

imaginative architecture.” (Hockey & Hallam, 2001, p.30-31). Joan Gibbons recognises

these historical memory systems in her chapter on Bourgeois’ work but suggests that

she confronts the more deeply emotional aspects of memory, creating a space which

“cannot be easily ‘read’ or inhabited.” The random and ambiguous selection and

placement of objects “resemble the comparatively unregulated realm of the

unconscious mind rather than the well-ordered house.” (Gibbons, 2007, p.18). The

interior architectural language Bourgeois uses to disclose and contain her memories

provides a way for her to address them in enclosed isolation, its power expanded to the

audience by metaphorical association.

Performing an opposing purpose is the work of William Christenberry (born 1936,

Alabama). His medium is predominantly colour photography - initially as source

material for his paintings - but later in his career began to use sculpture as a way to

more fully explore the sense of place expressed in his photographs of local buildings

from his childhood. In the 2008 book of collected stories and photographs, ‘Working

From Memory’, the narrative histories so closely linked with the vernacular architecture

18

Christenberry records are told by the artist himself. He states how memory forms the

basis of his work, and that it isn’t “necessary to try to rationalize it. I feel like I can

reach out and touch memory. Somehow it is malleable, it can be manipulated, formed,

shaped. It certainly can shape you. I know I feel very strongly about it.”

(Christenberry, 2008, p.85). This suggests a natural process where the artist combines

story telling and visual art in an unconscious attempt to preserve personal and cultural

histories. This practice is unsurprising considering the influence of remembered

narratives (and the ways they are recorded) in forming our personal and cultural

identities. As well as the impact that reading and writing have had upon our ability to

record and recollect, “anthropologists emphasize the significance of the spoken word

and oral narratives in the organization and communication of memories.” (Hallam &

Hockey, 2001, p.155).

Christenberry’s photographs of the rural architecture of the South tell of the people that

have inhabited them, and the place that the buildings themselves inhabit. (Appendix A).

He rings the changes through an annual pilgrimage, revisiting and re-photographing.

They never feature human figures and the environment pales into insignificance behind

the shacks, warehouses and chapels, which he transforms into eerie monuments. Yet

they manage to translate their meaning across time, culture and continent to speak to

the collective memory through a familiar language. Susanne Lange, editor of ‘Working

from Memory’, regards these narratives as a “key element of his artistic vocabulary”

which he harnesses “as a means of recalling and paying tribute to living experience.”

Christenberry himself describes this as the ability to “make an outsider look back on

something he has never been part of, and make him feel like he has always been part

of it.” (Lange, 2008, p.8).

19

If Christenberry’s photographs are monumental, his sculptures are memorial. He

makes them from memory, and by eye, insisting that they are not scale models. Their

physicality adds another dimension to the signifiers of times, spaces and stories

contained in his photographs. In an interview with Ben Sloat, responding to the

observation that his images seem to contain traces of people, the artist states that he

doesn’t make traditional portraits (despite having made family snapshots) because

when he does, it “doesn’t resonate with me as much as the human touch on a building,

on a grave, on an egg carton cross, that has a certain wonderment.” (Sloat, 2008).

Perhaps the most touching example of this is his sculpture ‘House Painted “Only as High

as One could Reach”’ (Fig. 6). He first photographed the building in 1970, but by 1977

it was gone. “There was no evidence of it having fallen down or anything like that. It

was just gone, and there was only a field of grass in its place. I’ll always wonder what

happened to that lady.” (Christenberry, 2008, p.48). He had spoken to the woman who

lived there only once, on his initial visit, and his construction is his personal container

for the memories he holds of her and her home, as well as more generally being a

vessel for the cultural memory of the region. The metaphors for death abound,

suggesting tombs, decay and demise, and Christenberry’s attempts to arrest this

inevitable process by recording, locating and preserving have been described as ‘duty

memory’. This can be explained as a person’s feeling of responsibility to record their

past “as an obligation tied to the maintenance of their identities.” Citing Pierre Nora,

Hallam & Hockey note the relevance of lieux de memoire, or sites of memory, which

constitute “material, symbolic and functional” elements. These apply to Christenberry’s

memory sites, being “material in that it is constituted by persons, functional in that it

passes on memories, and symbolic in that it represents experiences common to a

particular group.” (Hallam & Hockey, 2001, p.34).

20

Fig. 6. William Christenberry - House Painted “Only as High as One could Reach”

One can observe the discussed pieces of Louise Bourgeois and William Christenberry as

contrasting architectural memory work, dealing with the internal and external

respectively. This comparison is pertinent not only to describe the physical features of

their installations and photographs, but this seems, in turn, to be reflected in the type

of memories expressed and where they are located in the artists’ psyche. While the

strategy of Bourgeois would seem to be to internalize her personal memory objects in

order to ‘let them out’, Christenberry is concerned with preserving his cultural memory

through the process of representing and exposing its external architecture.

21

Chapter 3 - Emptiness and Absence Boltanski/Emin

Art work which regards emotions arising from loss also frequently draws on the

metaphorical possibilities provided by the empty container. Tracy Emin (born 1963,

UK), an artist known for the candid, autobiographical elements found in her work, made

headlines with a piece entitled ‘Everyone I Have Ever Slept With 1963-95’ .

Unsurprisingly the popular press considered it a self-confident proclamation of female

promiscuity - ignoring the personal aspects, companionship and loneliness - which

resulted in the artist’s subsequent rise to fame outside the art world. This was due in

part to the ambiguous and customarily provocative nature of Emin’s choice of title, and

later to the destruction of the piece in a fire in 2004 whilst in storage (heralded by

some as ‘good riddance to bad rubbish’). The work was essentially a cheap two-man

tent, onto the interior of which was stitched 102 appliquéd names. The title was in fact

a literal statement, and the list included Emin’s grandmother, two aborted pregnancies

and the words “WITH MYSELF, ALWAYS MYSELF, NEVER FORGETTING” situated on the

floor of the tent. The pertinence of this text was not lost on Neal Brown, who states

that “[t]he implication was that Emin’s presence was located and defined by other

people, but remained isolated and alone, somewhere between solitude and loneliness.”

(2006, p.83).

22

Fig. 7. Tracy Emin - Everyone I Have Ever Slept With 1963-95

The seemingly confessional nature of this work is undermined by the lack of detail,

which the audience can only guess at. The list tells us nothing of the specific

connotations which its creator possesses, only that they exist, and of the need to record

them. This direct reference to memory and (self-) preservation through the

comprehensive collection of ‘people’ from the artist’s birth to the date of production

may have overshadowed the generous use of metaphor in this piece. Firstly, despite its

emptiness, the tent is an archive in itself, each name representing a memory object,

presumably collected as triggers for Emin, so that she may recall certain connections.

Secondly, the tent would have had to have been entered by just one person at a time,

and be viewed whilst lying on the floor looking up. This not only puts the viewer

physically in the place of the artist, it intimately harks back to childhood memories of

“feeling safe from the world by getting in a box, or being inside a Wendy house.”

(Brown, 2006, p.86). One could also draw comparisons with a barren womb and with a

23

grave, or tomb – death itself being the eternal slumber – and so we return to

Baudrillard’s assertion that a collection represents an individual’s regressive attempt to

survive their own demise. Unconscious innocence could also lie at the heart of its

creation when one considers that “[f]or the child, collecting represents the most

rudimentary way to exercise control over the outer world: by laying things out,

grouping them, handling them.” (Baudrillard, 1994/1968, p.9).

Fig. 8. Christian Boltanski - Réserves: La Fete de Pourim

The large empty spaces which the installation works of Boltanski inhabit reverberate

with some of the huge issues they elicit, such as the Holocaust and mass murder. The

hundreds of virtually empty tins which make up ‘Archives de C.B.’, speak more of what

is missing, as do the thousands of garments and photographs used in numerous other

works. The central theme of Boltanski’s work seems to be emptiness contained.

24

The massive collection of clothing used for the ground level installation ‘Réserves: La

Fete de Pourim’ was crumpled and strewn about the floor and implicated the viewer

through experiential involvement. Lynn Gumpert describes the piece: “To see the

exhibition, visitors had to walk on the soft clothes, and with each step, they increasingly

felt as if they were walking on human bodies.” It is no accident that the work produced

such sensations, as the use of clothing, bereft of its original wearer, “emphasized

absence, which was symbolically connected with murder and death.” (Gumpert, 1994,

p.118). Despite Boltanski’s apparent reluctance to confirm any direct reference to the

Holocaust, it is clear that his intention was to conjure the emotions of lost lives on an

incomprehensible scale. The allusions to memorials such as Auschwitz-Birkenau -

where the belongings of victims are piled up in display cases - are undeniable.

Fig. 9. Shoes that belonged to people deported to Auschwitz for extermination

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The notion of a place of absence being used to represent loss of countless lives is

epitomized in the ‘Grave of the Unknown Soldier’. Following the First World War, and

its immeasurable death toll, the idea arose in Britain to create a national memorial in

the form of a tomb erected following the burial of an ‘unknown warrior’. This was in an

effort to provide a location upon which the common memory of the collective and

unidentified dead could be focussed, symbolically signifying any and all of the dead,

wherever they fell. This powerful analogy, according to Hallam and Hockey, went some

way to temper general fears among the post-war public that “the dead body will be

reduced to anonymous materiality” and relieved “anxieties about the assimilation of

individual persons into a collective mass of bodies”. They assert that this relationship

between the living and the dead is made more tangible by such memorialization, and

that it stands as a concrete place containing “the multiple memories of parents,

fiancées and widows” (Hallam & Hockey, 2001, p. 89-90). Joan Gibbons acknowledges

Boltanski’s implicit strategy when she states that he “relies on our ability to treat

arbitrary items of discarded clothing as surrogates […] knowing that their function as

memento mori carries through regardless of origin.” She writes of his awareness of

‘large memory’, which relies on familiar cultural and historical knowledge and/or

experience to bring about particular associations in his audience through the “large-

scale renditions” of objects usually encountered on more individual terms (Gibbons,

2007, p.78).

Photographic portraits carry certain connotations, and their use as memory triggers

makes up a considerable part of Boltanski’s creative output. He almost exclusively

employs collections of found and appropriated photos, sometimes re-photographing

them so as to impose uniformity, and re-presenting them out of context and with no

26

description. They recall the familiarity of the family album, and his earlier pieces often

allude to autobiography (by the inclusion of his own possessions), but Gibbons notes

that they were not entirely “genuine in origin, which sets up an ironically deceptive

juxtaposition of fiction and authenticity.” (2007, p.77). Additionally, this blending of

personal and anonymous archival material could be seen as a comment on the

reliability of memory itself. In an essay entitled ‘The Fury of Disappearance’, Aleida

Assmann examines how photography works in Boltanski’s installations. “They

document, while simultaneously compensating for, the passage of time, as they capture

and retain that which is transient.” She goes on to recognise the accepted view that in

western culture, photography “is celebrated as one of the fundamental transmitters of

memory,” and that there exists an element of memorialization in old photos which

“remain to bear witness to a person’s life after they have passed away.” Through this

reproduction, the process of which causes them to lose definition, the portraits

sometimes become unrecognisable which, she believes “emphasizes this erosion of the

mnemonic value.” (Assmann, 2007, p. 90-93) This effect, coupled with the dislocated

position of found images which have lost their place in the family archive from which

they originated, compounds the feelings of loss they evoke.

The ethereal qualities of photography have been well-ruminated over, but in his

examination of the medium from 1927, Siegfried Kracauer writes beautifully how a

portrait of a person is merely “a sum of what can be deducted from him or her.” He

describes the clothing that a now deceased individual wears as trappings, like a

mannequin in costume, and compares these disintegrated elements to photography

itself: “Those things once clung to us like our skin, and this is how our property still

clings to us today. We are contained in nothing and photography assembles fragments

27

around a nothing.” (Kracauer, 1993/1927, p.430-31). So the photographic portraits in

Boltanski’s work could be seen as empty material containers, stripped of their original

histories, depicting shells of once remembered ghosts.

Boltanski’s use of photography, as well as garments, normally represent what he terms

‘small memory’, which Gibbons defines as “the sort of object which distinguishes

people’s lives from each other’s and harbours memory but which is lost with each

individual death.” This is why the sense of loss and absence is so tangible in the work

of Boltanski; it fuses the individual to the collective with the use of single, physically

empty, mnemonic signifiers, but on a monumental scale within huge, empty spaces.

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Chapter 4 - Narrative Attachments

Society’s Stories “I have been charged with membership of an internet. There has been no trial,

just a meeting of thanes in the Great Hall of the London Thing. Though they

use these words – charged, internet – they don’t really know what they mean

anymore. They are words from before the Withering.”

Kunzru, 2013, p.12

A recent, ambitious exhibition at the V&A, London, entitled Memory Palace, used as its

starting point a short story written by author Hari Kunzru. A post-apocalyptic future

(where remembering and recording is a crime punishable by death, and a re-connection

with nature free of the burden of accounting is to be strived for), was used as an

inspiration for 20 artists and illustrators to create new work. The exhibition, and

accompanying book, was curated by Laurie Britton Newell and Ligaya Salazar, and Sky

Arts produced a television documentary, presented by Kunzru, introducing the

exhibition and featuring some of the artists involved.

29

Fig. 10. Isabel Greenberg - Illustration (Untitled)

In the same way as the historical concept of a Memory Theatre did, this exhibition took

elements to be remembered and communicated (the art works) and placed them within

an interior space. Despite there being odd excerpts from the original text around the

gallery space the story was not reproduced and the viewer had to glean information

from the works themselves. This lack of explicit storytelling was intentional; relying on

the audience’s presumed skill in reading mnemonic markers to decipher the narrative.

The curators explain, “the words and images tell different yet connected and supporting

plots, there are no object labels or factual information inside the exhibition.” (Britton

Newell & Salazar, 2013, p.89). The story focuses upon the ways that society attempts

to preserve its cultural history, and individuals their personal and social memories, all

30

without a formal structure within which to do so. The central character is taught how

to use a system of remembering which borrows directly from Camillo’s original Memory

Theatre, in order to overcome the perceived ignorance enforced by the ruling

dictatorship.

Fig. 11. Giulio Camillo’s Memory Theatre

That the exhibition was situated within the grand halls of the V&A, itself a repository

preserving treasures of human knowledge and history, is a faithful rendering of this

system. Contributing illustrator, Isabel Greenberg, describes in the documentary how

she used historical exhibits within the museum, gaining inspiration from medieval

tapestries. The way they represent narratives in storybook style is reminiscent of her

usual medium. Referring to the passage she illustrated (where the protagonist

encounters an abandoned storehouse of technological equipment - Appendix B) she

describes how she attempted to visualize memories and networks as physical

connections between people’s heads (Figure 12). Hari Kunzru states that in this part of

the story he was “trying to imagine what an internet might mean to somebody who had

only the vaguest idea of a network and connectivity.” (Aimes, 2013, June 19).

31

Fig. 12. Isabel Greenberg - Illustration (Untitled) - details

Despite the claim in Oliver Wainwright’s review that the exhibition tries to cram in too

much, he concludes that Memory Palace conveys precisely the themes of the story that

inspired it. “The result is a vibrant feast of visual techniques, but one that has difficulty

hanging together as a coherent experience. But perhaps that is the point: by the end

of the show, you're at sea – as bemused and befuddled as the disoriented narrator

himself.” (Wainwright, 2013). The project creatively presented the ‘art of memory’

through the subject matter of the story itself, the art it exhibited, and the strategy used

- displaying the works as memory objects contained within a gallery space. This

figurative link between historical visualization of memory and the lived environment was

successfully implemented, providing “an experiential reading format for a story.” As the

curators assert: “the design of the exhibition draws on the underlying themes of the

story itself and unifies the diverse elements of the project.” (Britton Newell & Salazar,

2013, p.88). A final and relevant observation of Memory Palace is the concluding

episode where the protagonist, sentenced to death, ‘downloads’ his acquired knowledge

to someone, for them to remember, for the sake of preservation. One personal

memory may be added, so that the individual may not be completely forgotten. “This is

what we do for the dying. I am permitted to add one memory of my own to the store.

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The others will hold it, will cherish it as carefully as the words of a Lawlord. After I am

gone, it is all that will remain.” (Kunzru, 2013, p.80). Visitors to the exhibition were

invited to add one personal memory to the V&A’s collective ‘memory bank’ using touch

screen pads in the final room. Each week’s contributions were brought together as

large posters displayed around the room, becoming supplementary and audience-

inclusive artworks – a pertinent addition to the show. This exhibition is a contemporary

interpretation of the art of memory, uniting literary and visual expression to tell its own

story about the act of remembering as a human need.

In a less assuming way, Christenberry’s book, Working From Memory, is also a material

container of a narrative (as indeed, all books are), but in this case integrating the

artwork with its associated stories to preserve the particular memories important to the

artist. Each photograph could represent a memory object, and the text which

accompanies it enables the reader to form a stronger link with the depicted place

through Christenberry’s endearing and affecting accounts of personal and social

histories. In his beautiful reflection on the writings of Nikolai Leskov, Walter Benjamin

likens oral narrative tradition to a web of fabric; each time the story is told the teller

adds something of themselves to it, the chain evolving as it is woven to present a

compelling chronicle (1968/1955). He laments the decline of storytelling in its purest

form and suggests that it runs alongside the waning of craftsmanship, when the

boredom of manual work would be diverted by listening to a good yarn being spun.

Historical accounts interwoven with personal stories recounted to an ambient listener -

lost in the narrative as the “rhythm of work has seized him” - enable them to be more

deeply impressed in the memory. (Benjamin, 1968/1955, p.91). Benjamin goes further,

linking this recession with a simultaneous reduction of the visibility of death, as society

33

hides away the dying in sterile environments (rather than the home, now mostly

untouched by death – dry dwellings). This acceleration of death’s process lessens the

“communicability of experience.” (Benjamin, 1968/1955, p.93). Perhaps it could be

concluded that this cultural demise is what Christenberry is attempting to counteract

through his work? The craft of photography undertaken on a medium format camera, a

meditative process, year after year, seeking out stories, listening, remembering,

retelling. Benjamin’s idea that there is a difference between the historian and the

storyteller, the former being bound to accurate explanation, leads to his term

‘historyteller’ to describe the role of the chronicler, building up the personal layers of

fabric within which the histories are cradled.

Returning to the final act of the Memory Palace tale and exhibition, and drawing from

Benjamin’s observation that the strength of personal stories are felt most deeply at the

moment of death, we begin to see how important the tradition of passing on one’s

history can be. “The stuff that stories are made of” – a man’s real life, as well as his

acquired wisdom, becomes transmissible when he realizes he is dying. Just as the

protagonist ‘downloads’ a forgotten society’s knowledge, adding his personal memory to

the collective repository, and the visitor contributes their parting thoughts to the

‘memory bank’, from Benjamin’s historyteller “the unforgettable emerges and [he]

imparts to everything that concerned him that authority which even the poorest wretch

in dying possesses for the living around him”. (Benjamin, 1968/1955, p.94).

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Family Stories

If Christenberry’s book can be interpreted as containing (and thus preserving) cultural

histories, then a family photo album is precisely this for personal histories. Through the

exhibition in September 2013 of his collection of anonymous, found family photographs

and albums, ‘Album Beauty’, Dutch curator Erik Kessels attempts to illustrate the

importance of this dying practice. Tim Clark notes in his review how the collection

reveals something important about the human condition “beyond the nostalgic pleasure

drawn from these pre-digital images.” (2013). The material and indeed private nature

of such photographs enabled Kessels to focus on the less than perfect picture of real

family life, highlighting dissonance through awkward poses, jarring juxtaposition and

even mutilation, as individuals attempt to construct and reconstruct their own family

narratives.

Fig. 13. Erik Kessels - Anonymous ‘cut out’ photograph

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In her account of how this kind of family editing instigated her curiosity for and

subsequent practice of bricolage, Sherry Turkle describes her childhood search for clues

about her father’s - and therefore her own - identity. “The image had been attacked,

but it contained so many missing puzzle pieces. What his hands looked like. That he

wore lace-up shoes. That his pants were tweed.” (Turkle, 2011, p.4). The sense of

loss is palpable, as she mourns for someone she has never known. What is contained

in the hole where her father’s face should have been is the entirety of the father he

could have been, as well as her imagined, alternative childhood story. (Appendix C).

One could liken this practice of cutting unwanted individuals from family photographs to

what Roland Barthes describes as a punctum. This is an element of a photograph

which disturbs the viewer’s general impression of it, a punctuation mark, a sensitive

point. In Barthes’ words, it is a “sting, speck, cut, little hole. A photograph’s punctum

is that accident which pricks me (but also bruises me, is poignant to me).” (Barthes,

1980, p.27). That Barthes is referring to his perception, undoubtedly meaningful, of a

composition, makes the mutilation of a photograph’s inhabitant all the more powerful in

Turkle’s case. It is also worth considering Marianne Hirsch’s thoughts on punctum in

relation to personal narrative and photography in her book ‘Family Frames’, which

specifically looks at postmemory arising from the Holocaust. The concept of

postmemory ties in with Boltanski’s theme of emptiness and massive loss through ‘large

memory’, but is one which can just as easily be applied to ‘small memory’ when one

considers Hirsch’s description: “Postmemory characterizes the experience of those who

grew up dominated by narratives that preceded their birth, whose own belated stories

are evacuated by the stories of the previous generation shaped by traumatic events

that can be neither understood nor recreated.” (Hirsch, 1997, p.22). She suggests that

36

the punctum of a family photograph can suspend time, rendering the viewer incapable

of moving beyond their sense of loss, acting as an “arresting anti-narrative wound”.

(Hirsch, 1997, p.5). It is no surprise then, that Turkle could have considered this single

mutilated object to contain every interminable chapter from her possible family story,

her own personal postmemory, if you like; “as full and as empty, certainly as

constructed, as memory itself.” (Hirsch, 1997, p.22).

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Chapter 5 - The Attic, The Suitcase, The Garment

In his book ‘Memory and Material Culture’, Andrew Jones talks of the popular appeal of

thinking about the memory as some kind of physical entity, which “retains the objects

of perception”. Because of the location of our thoughts - in our head; our brain - our

memory can easily be figured as a container, or storehouse. When we consider it in

terms of the architecture of the mind, it follows that an attic might be a fitting

metaphor. In fact, the attic is often the place we put things which we have no need to

access readily, but which we don’t want to forget completely. Jones quotes both Sir

Arthur Conan Doyle and Umberto Eco as having utilized the attic to describe how we

store our memories or knowledge. The former suggests (through Sherlock Holmes’

explanation of the most advantageous way to retain relevant knowledge) that the brain

originates as an empty attic, which the skilful man stocks in an orderly manner with the

most useful furniture, whereas the latter presents the attic as a reference library for the

memory when his protagonist finds his failing. However, he deems this analogy

somewhat lacking as it implies that the boundaries of containment are fixed and finite,

and that for more to be added, some must be sacrificed. (Jones, 2007, pp. 8-9).

Conversely, when discussing the archival practice of Boltanski, Aleida Assman considers

the attic space as an informal archive - one which isn’t systematically organised but

“generally composed of sedimented layers of that which has escaped our attention and

has been forgotten.” (2006, p. 94). This accumulation of leftovers of family history

seems to me to function in the same way as Warhol’s time capsules; semi-disposal.

38

The attic as container provides a ‘safe’ place to store objects, a holding area, or

quarantine, which allows their significance to be re-evaluated with the passing of time.

The suitcase resides between the loft space and the garment. It is an object that one

might expect to encounter in an attic, and is itself a storage container, most commonly

for clothes. The suitcase in the work I would like to examine, by Olivia Dasté features

in ‘Evocative Objects’. Its qualities are described in loving detail and compared to the

woman to whom it once belonged – Dasté’s grandmother. She felt compelled to fill it

with a selection of her grandmother’s belongings when faced with her mother’s frenzied

post-mortem disposal, and two and a half years later, she explains, she still had not

opened it. “Finally, I have only to lift the top, but I am not ready for the smell of her

perfume, her hair, her jewelry, and clothes to come at me so fast.” (Dasté, 2009,

p.248). The significance of material forms as memory objects cannot be

underestimated when it comes to the remembrance of a deceased loved one.

Considering death as a departure from the real world of social interactions, it stands to

reason that to counteract a physical loss, meaningful objects are often utilised to

mediate between the still tangible memories of a person and their future inaccessibility.

With her words: “[t]he suitcase is for both of us. It holds her for me and me for her”,

Dasté is speaking of her own identity in relation to her grandmother’s, her place within

the family, and suggesting that she is safeguarding the parts of herself which were

formed through their relationship. (Dasté, 2009, p.248).

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In her book ‘Over Her Dead Body’ which ponders the representation of female mortality

in art and literature, Elisabeth Bronfen asserts that “death emphasises the

impermanence of social experience and elicits attempts to preserve some aspects of it

in permanent form.” (1992, p.77). It is worth noting Dasté’s reaction to the sense of

smell as she opens the suitcase, as some studies have found memories evoked by

olfactory stimuli can be more emotional than those brought about by visual or verbal

cues. In addition, odour evoked memory representations tend to be older, and are

“associated with stronger feelings of being brought back in time.” (Willander and

Larrson, 2006, p.243). This could explain why objects which have a scent attached can

be so evocative; it adds a supplementary layer of experiential association.

Fig. 14. Jeanette Montgomery Barron - Chester Weinberg, fur coat

40

“In the years since she’s been gone, I’ve taken to curling up beneath my mother’s

fur coat; it comforts me. Her name is embroidered inside, “Ellie M.,” so that it

could be easily identified at a party filled with fur-wearing women. Sometimes I

take naps with the coat as a blanket and am transported by the mixture of smells

and a lingering odor of a perfume no longer in existence.”

Montgomery Barron, 2009, p.9

I touched on the use of clothing in Chapter 3, but its relevance here is on a much more

personal level. ‘My Mother’s Clothes’ is an album of photographs with accompanying

recollections, and a poignant portrait of a woman, by her daughter, photographer

Jeanette Montgomery Barron. The photographs of Eleanor’s clothes began as a way for

her to trigger in her mother the memories and often-told tales which were diminishing

as a result of Alzheimer’s disease. They have ended up being memory objects for

Montgomery Barron herself, contained within the book she has written, which serves to

commemorate a life and retain its memories. They are all the more pertinent in this

double sense, as their use as aides-memoire was realised both before, and after the

death of the woman who inspired them.

“Clothes presuppose the three-dimensional human figure as well as defining its

absence”, writes Juliet Ash, contemplating the worth of garments to the bereaved. She

looks favourably at how clothes can highlight absence and presence simultaneously by

provoking a subjective emotional response, which can, through connections between

the past and present, provide the grieving with “a more positive comprehension of

absence.” (Ash, 1996, p.220-22). ‘My Mother’s Clothes’ is a collection of objects

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“attached to a day, a season, a voice, a laugh, a moment, a memory” (Kinmonth, 2009,

inside front cover), just as the items in Olivia Dasté’s grandmother’s suitcase are.

Indeed, any set of objects, kept for their emotional resonance, even if stored, half-

forgotten in a dusty attic, once served this same purpose.

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Conclusion

What I have discovered from the analyses in this paper is that the materialization of

memory is not confined to creative practices but a phenomenon common to many

people. It could be summed up as a manifestation of the urge to communicate with

the future through remembrance of the past by way of a familiar structure of

containment.

Palmer Albers cites Foucault as concluding that the archive refers not simply to a

physical collection of photographs and documents, “but rather to a larger system of

ourselves that shapes and determines our own systems of discourse.” (2011, p.251).

This epitomizes the ephemeral nature of the human memory’s recollection of its

existence and could explain why we represent it in tangible, material forms. These

artist’s practices use or mimic a conceptual structure familiar to us in the unconscious

formation of our own identity by way of memory construction. In doing this, they

engage a fundamental metaphorical framework for our own attempts to locate and

preserve something of our history in the indeterminate future. This endeavour,

whether futile or not, represents what could be seen as part of the ‘human condition’ –

where we grapple with identity, mortality and loneliness.

The artists, writers, philosophers and ‘historytellers’ who interpret these themes

through their memory containers speak to the collector that resides within us.

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Appendices

Appendix A The house built by the man with one arm

William Christenberry, from ‘Working From Memory’, 2008

Fig. 15. William Christenberry - The house built by the man with one arm

I was photographing Coleman’s Café, just outside of Greensboro, Alabama. This was in

the early eighties. It was a beautiful day, the light was just exquisite on the façade of

the store and, surprisingly, no people were around. I was under the dark cloth

focusing, getting ready to open the shutter. I came out from under the cloth and –

poof – just like that, out of nowhere, within my left arm’s reach was this man, with

purple-black skin. You often see African American people in the Deep South who are

this beautiful purple-black color. He was dressed all in white. He had on a white

starched shirt, white starched pants, shoes freshly painted white, and a big, wide-

brimmed white hat. He said “You like that old building, son?” I said, “Yes, sir.” That’s

important because a lot of people would say, “Why do you like that?” He didn’t say

that. “You like that old building, son? You ought to see my house.” I said, more out of

courtesy than anything else, “Well sir, when I finish here I’d like to see your house.”

He told me it was only just down the road a couple of miles. He waited while I made

44

the exposure and broke down the camera. My car was there, he got in beside me, and

I started down the road. He asked me, “Son, do you know where I can get any work?

I lost this left arm in a sawmill accident, 1940 something.” Now from his short-sleeved

shirt the left arm was gone. And remember that he was just impeccably dressed, he

was like an apparition, like a dream. I didn’t know what to say when he asked me

where he could get work. “Sir, I wish I could help you but my family doesn’t live here

any longer.” That seemed to satisfy him, and he didn’t persue it any more. In a

minute he said, “Pull over on the shoulder of the road, son.” He pointed out the car

window. “That’s my house, see that house, that’s my house, I built that with one arm.”

If you look closely in the photograph, you can see that the cinder blocks of the house

are not perfectly level, meaning that it looked like somebody with an impairment had

built it. “Let me show you inside,” he said. It was a rectangular shaped house with a

flat-top roof, painted with a thin wash of white with a yellow trim, not freshly painted.

So we went down this path and in the back door. Then my heart really sank. There

was no floor, just red earth. Over in the corner was a beat-up old stove, a mattress

crumpled up on the floor, a piece of broken chair. And we just stood there, talking

about various and sundry things, the weather and the heat and things like that. I

asked him if I could photograph his house. “Oh, I would be so pleased. Please, you’re

welcome to photograph my house.” So I went out front, set up the big camera, made

the picture, and thanked him. When I got back home to Washington, about a week

later, and saw the contact print, the exposure was fine. It was in focus and all those

things, but it did not resonate with what I had experienced. Now, I don’t know of any

means of expression that could absolutely capture what had happened there. A poem

could probably do it. Technically, the picture was sound, but I was a little disappointed.

All I could think was, well I’ll try again next year. I often do this with my subjects. And

some years you’re disappointed, and some years you’re exhilarated, because the light

may be different on the subject, or it may look different altogether. So the next year,

in August, I pull along the shoulder of the road, get out of the car, and go down that

winding red earth path. And as I go towards tha house, a neighbour comes running

across his lawn. He looks at me and he points to the house, “You looking for Mr. So-

and-so?” I said, “Yes, sir.” “He died. He froze to death last winter.” There’s no way I

have ever been able to go back there. I pass it, but I have never tried to make a

photograph of that house again.

45

Appendix B Memory Palace, Excerpts

Hari Kunzru, 2013

From page 9: When I learned the art of memory, I was living in an old palace in Great

Poor Land Street. Before the Withering it had been a library, every room filled with

pewter and sign. I knew each corner of that house without having to make an effort,

so it was easy to use it to remember by. Later, after I was arrested and confined in

this cell, I was afraid I would go mad, so small was it, so featureless and dark. I cried

in the night. When I slept I dreamed I was being crushed. So I began to move my

memories, to place them around the cell, in the cracks of the floor, on the rusty handle

of the slop bucket. By rights, such a small room could not serve the purpose. But I

gave each spot a meaning, and as I populated it with the things I have been given to

remember, the cell began to grow. It was like pushing the walls outwards with my

hands. Now it has expended to the horizon. To me, it is as grand as a power station.

From page 58: We climbed over a pile of rubble into one of the old hospitals at Use

Town. Hidden in the depths of the building was a door, which led down a steep flight

of steps into a tunnel that Bilgee said was called a tube. People once got inside these

tubes and travelled from one place to another, following lines of different colours. We

trudged along the tube by the light of a lantern, until we came to a kind of cave, with

raised banks on either side. The walls were tiled, and here and there were embedded

pieces of coloured sign, the clan colours of old London, the red, the white and the blue.

I saw that we had come to a treasure house, filled with tricknology. There were piles

of qwerties, ancient screens whose black surfaces had a sort of half-shine, the deep

half-shine of captured light, the kind of colour we can’t make any more because we’ve

lost the secret. We climbed up on to the banks, and he showed me stacks of boxes,

flat and featureless on some sides, indented with complicated holes on others. These,

he explained, were pewters. They were filled with number. If we were to breathe

power into them, they would spill out the speech of dead men and pictures that moved

without a guiding hand. Beside the pewters were belts of plastic, some with carved

buckles that, he showed me, were made to connect the pewters to the power that the

ancient Lawlords had coaxed out of the earth.

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Appendix C Introduction: The Things That Matter

Sherry Turkle, 2008

I grew up hoping that objects would connect me to the world. As a child, I spent many

weekends at my grandparents’ apartment in Brooklyn. Space there was limited, and all

of the family keepsakes – including my aunt’s and my mother’s books, trinkets,

souvenirs, and photographs – were stored in a kitchen closet, set high, just below the

ceiling. I could reach this cache only by standing on the kitchen table that I moved in

front of the closet. This I had been given permission to do, and this is what I did, from

age six to age thirteen or fourteen, over and over, weekend after weekend. I would

climb onto the table in the kitchen and take down every book, every box. The rules

were that I was allowed to look at anything in the closet, but I was always to put it

back. The closet seemed to me of infinite dimensions, infinite depth.

Each object I found in the closet – every keychain, postcard, unpaired earring, high

school text book with its marginalia, some of it my mother’s, some of it my aunt’s –

signalled a new understanding of who they were and what they might be interested in;

every photograph of my mother on a date or at a dance became a clue to my possible

identity. My biological father had been an absent figure since I was two. My mother

had left him. We never spoke about him. It was taboo to raise the subject. I did not

feel permitted to even think about the subject.

My aunt shared the small apartment with my grandmother and grandfather, and

sometimes one of them would come into the kitchen to watch me at my investigations.

At the time I didn’t know what I was looking for. I think they did. I was looking,

without awareness, for the one who was missing. I was looking for a trace of my

father. But they had been there before me and gotten rid of any bits and pieces he

might have left – an address book, a business card, a random note. Once I found a

photograph of a man standing on a boardwalk with his face cut out of the picture. I

never asked whose face it was; I knew. And I knew enough never to mention the

photograph, for fear that it too would disappear. It was precious to me. The image

had been attacked, but it contained so many missing puzzle pieces. What his hands

looked like. That he wore lace-up shoes. That his pants were tweed.

47

If being attentive to the details of people’s lives might be considered a vocation, mine

was born in the smell and feel of the memory closet and its objects. This is where I

found the musty books, photographs, corsages, and gloves that made me feel

connected. That is where I determined that I would solve mysteries and that I would

use objects as my clues.

Years from then, in the late 1960s, I studied in Paris, immersed in the intellectual world

of French structuralism. While I was away, my grandparents moved out of their

apartment, where the contents of my memory closet had been so safely contained.

Much of the closet’s contents were dispersed, sent to an organisation that collected

books to be read to the blind. Far away from home, I was distressed at the loss of the

objects but somewhat comforted to realise that I now had a set of ideas for thinking

about them. In Paris, I read the work of the anthropologist Claude Levi-Strauss, who

described bricolage as a way of combining and recombining a closed set of materials to

come up with new ideas. Material things, for Levi-Strauss, were goods-to-think-with

and, following the pun in French, they were good-to-think-with as well. While in

France, I realized that during my many hours with the memory closet I had done more

than daydream ideas into old photographs.

48

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