Buch, Englisch, 200 Seiten, Format (B × H): 120 mm x 180 mm
From Traumatic Memory Culture to Learning With Bodies
Buch, Englisch, 200 Seiten, Format (B × H): 120 mm x 180 mm
ISBN: 978-3-00-082665-8
Verlag: Plural Studio
In 1001 Accurate Memories Berlin artist Alex Head presents patterns of self-repair amongst the ruins of ideas, relationships and human bodies. The author travels across space and time attempting to gain insights into class, disability and trauma through drawing, writing and photography. His investigation into traumatic memory tempts the author to suggest a shift from Germany’s professed ‘memory culture’ to a ‘traumatic memory culture’, in that traumatic memory is greatly more accurate.
Consequently, 1001 Accurate Memories seeks to locate the reader back within their own skin by highlighting our differentiated but ultimately shared anatomy.
Birthed from a seven year odyssey into blood, guts and tears, the work proposes that sensations in the body begin wider processes of understanding. By identifying the value of listening to the body in this way, the interpretative role of the human brain becomes more apparent. From this insight stems the ability to see trauma, memory and political propaganda as forms of easily manipulated emotional information. This leads Head to conclude that the primary way to counter such manipulation is the spiritual, physical and mental self-determination of the human body.
Zielgruppe
The book is for those interested in art as a process of human knowledge production. The drawings included are bright, vibrant and evocative, while equally solemn, curious, detailed and moody. They attempt to predict the future, jump timelines, recall early memories and respond to both lightness and weight.
The author explores blockages to creativity as the means for creativity. He employs drawing as a critical pipeline between the brain in his head and the rest of his body. He invites the viewer and the reader to explore an embodied mind in contrast to the ‘embrained body’ that worries itself to physical and further psychological sickness. The drawings explore the impact of culture on our interior worlds as a way to access and process personal, childhood and young adult memories. The work stands in the present despite its ties to the past and to the future.
One drawing repeats: Requiem for a Child’s Experience of Time. Again, the personal and the political are deeply interwoven.
