Unpacking, 2009
Over the last couple of years I traveled a great deal and I even moved a few times leaving behind, at friends and relatives, cardboard boxes stuffed with books. Here in Texas, where I now live, I casually started creating a sort of catalogue of these distant bodies. The effort to remember versus the chaos of memories. Last year, I noticed how during my classes, my students would look up books or quotes on the internet with their cell phones or computers. I didn't see the trace of the slightest effort on their faces. On the other hand, at home, I carried on straining my memory, creating kaleidoscopic architectures of recollection by writing titles, notes and free association of thoughts. At a certain point, I decided to film my performances with a camera. At first, the subject of my shots was only the shadow of my hand writing with a felt-tip pen on an overhead projector, then I decided to get other people involved, driven by curiosity and the desire to share with someone else the weight of the immense effort of recollection. Thus, “Unpacking” was born, as a series of performances consisting in the recollection of read, lost and/or loved books, with the subsequent digressions, uncertainties and free associations. The video installation “Unpacking” is made up of videos projected on one or more surfaces consisting of empty cardboard boxes placed one on top of the other, as if to build a wall. “Unpacking” performs the kaleidoscopic architecture of memory by means of writing the titles of read, lost and/or loved books, notes and free associations of thoughts. Each performer, without any time limit, found herself/himself writing with a felt-tip pen on an acetate sheet projected by an overhead projector...
