Sounds in Deep Silence 2016

 

Sounds in deep silence.

Daugavpils, Latvia, 2016

 

It interests me to explore the effects of cultural and political conditioning and processes that affects the creation of  memory. While walking through the city of Daugavpils, southeastern Latvia, I have created a connection with the collective memory I shared with the inhabitants of this place. 

I focused on chidren’s playgrounds as the games happened to be very similar to the ones we used to have as kids, and that were later replaced with modern ones, mostly made of plastic.

While rethinking about games from childhood we used to play it was impossible to recall their rules or ways of playing them, leaving me only with the reminesence of strong feelings, like the smell of rust and steel on the hands, the cold from the metal and the bright colors of the paint. In this moment of dejavu I figured how collective remembering often lead to collective amnesia. Enlarging a detail to the point where the sign itself disappears is a way to regain the focus on that very detail, on an isolated feeling that later enlarges slowly to makes us see the bigger picture. 

By enlarging parts of color and rust, working on their ovelapping and focusing on a not always recognizable detail, I wanted to analyze the amnesia, when the only thing we remeber are just certain feelings or fragments, solicited by what we see or hear or smell.

The surroundings offered a monochromatic, silent landscape, interrupted only by sporadic batches of bright colours and very isolated proofs of human activity.

A topography of real artifacts is conducting us into a circle of thoughts and without offering any definitive answers, making us approach to the archipelago of the world.

This works is produced as a selection of digital prints of variable dimensions (max 50 x 70 cm, min 30 x 40 cm), a sound installation and a photo book.