reciprocity

solo exhibition
03.11.- 08.12.2021
Gallery Altan Klamovka
Prague, CZ

curator: Lenka Sýkorová
video: Tereza Havlínková
supported by: Ministry of Culture of the Czech Republic, the Prague City Hall, the Municipality of Prague 5, the Austrian Cultural Forum Prague and the Austrian Federal Ministry for Arts and Culture, Civil Service and Sports

The exhibition project explores facets of mutuality between exhibition visitors and their own memories. 

reciprocity invites visitors to engage with the exhibited installation format in a participatory way. In the space of the Altan Klamovka Gallery, an intimate space is created for an exchange between visitors and their own past, positive memories. 

The setting consists of hanging and stretched line objects, made of metal and thread that form a walk-in installation in the space. A voice tells about the process of remembering, how the past is brought into the now and how our brain and memory can change in a self-determined way through neuroplasticity (in short: constant further change of the brain cells). Schaitl’s research in the context of contemplative neuroscience, haptics and remembering/forgetting is the starting point for the installation.

The exhibition explores how positive memories from the visitors’ personal past can be revalidated and reactivated. Through a sound installation and a spatial sculpture of wires, threads and drawings created especially for the exhibition space, it invites visitors to take time for contemplation and offers participatory methods to bring a positive memory back to the present moment. The methods range from listening to a voice telling of past memories, to reflecting on one’s own memories, to leaving a physical trace of this memory in the exhibition space. In this way, a re-experiencing in the now takes place and the positive comes to the fore. 

The exhibition setting makes it possible to first relive one’s own memory in one’s mind and to think it through. As a further step, this memory can then be drawn, abstractly recorded or formed into a three-dimensional line by means of wire, which is then attached to the existing installation on site. In this way, an archive of memory lines develops in the course of the exhibition, which stand for diverse, individual memories that cannot be read by other people.

reciprocity therefore investigates how a past memory can be revived by activating the senses of touch and hearing. Remembering memory, perceiving touch, feeling and drawing memory again, reliving memory.

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