Their Things Spoken is the third part of a trilogy which deals with different aspects of memory and visual archetypes in our culture, the first two being Memory Theater (1997) and Things Spoken (1999).
Their Things Spoken refers to the gulf between the conservation and valuation of officially recognised cultural representations and the information content of bearers of personal significance originating in apparently unimportant, unknown biographies. The artist distributed among visitors to the ZKM a leaflet asking, »Why not put your favourite object in a museum?« This question stimulated the museum visitors to reflect upon rituals of appreciating and keeping, and to relate the museum exhibits to the relics to which they attribute private significance. Using a Polaroid camera to document contributors and objects, and a tape recorder for their stories and comments, she imposed no restrictions on the choice of personal favourites. Her concern was to warehouse the portraits of people and objects in the most neutral possible way, so that every image and statement is equally valid. The DVD-ROM storage medium allows the body of contributions to be archived exactly as they were documented. The stories stand for themselves and, like an atlas of everyday life, show a random collection of people whose relationship to the world is revealed through the objects they identify with.
(Agnes Hegedüs)