ELUSIVE SELF
A room installation which deals with the capacity of our brain to remember - and to forget, focusing on how we constantly revalue and recreate our relation to ourselves and to our past.
Our memory is not like a printed book with an unalterable text,
but rather like a flickering screen with countless images appearing and disappearing in an endless stream, which is illustrated in this installation by an edited video sequence.
// Installation description:
The room is darkened.
On the floor of the space lies a gigantic open "book", about 1,50 x 2,50 m, sculpted in white salt and placed on a podium 0.50 m. high.
The book serves as a projection surface for a video projector attached to the ceiling - not immediately visible to the public.
In front of the lying book stands a pillar, about. 1,75 m. high,
containing a small video monitor, showing a series of pictures from brain scan as background with an incrusted an image from a 3-D animation: the word MEMORY.
Approaching, one will hear a child's voice enumerating various substances that affect our brain and our memory.
Sound: The original sounds from the filmed segments plus humming voices of two Masaai warriors.
The installation "Elusive Self" was shown at The Culture House, Stockholm 2002, at Museo de Arte Contemporaneo, Santiago de Chile 200, Husby Konsthall Stockholm 2017.