“Phantom”, exhibition view, Storrady Park Offices, Szczecin, 2016
Phantom consists of two videos (Maria and Phantom), a photograph and an object (in the end ghost run out of memory), paintings and xeroxes (Tempo di viaggio and Maria. Palazzo de Aur). The figure of the phantom is helpful while reflecting on memory and subjectivity. Phantom (fr. a spectre, ghost) is an entity with an unclear status. It has a power to haunt and occupy bodies and souls. It appears, disappears, comes and goes as if it was a fixation, regardless of the subject–hosts’ will. The figure of phantom aids navigation within the field of memory and history, traverses between the past and the future. It can join seemingly inconsistent narratives and jump between moments that are afar in time and space. Finally the figure of a ghost allows us to think of a subject as an incomplete, spectral existence.
*
To be haunted by a ghost is to remember something you’ve never lived through.
I work mainly with stories and objects that bear traces of memory. The stories are as material as the objects. I would call this practise a specific kind of ”an archeology” – both working within the frame of memory (stories, objects, dreams) and an archeology as a kind of psychological excavation. I believe, experiencing the past can be as intense as experiencing the present. And vice versa – nowness has the power to change the course of events by letting a virus in. My aim is to elaborate my own practical model of dealing with, and narrating histories. I believe that memory should be performed – so the meanings appear and disappear ghostlike.