A metaphor for memory and memory politics
Our collaborative work Correspondences reflects on the Bridges of Remembrance trip to Georgia in October 2023 in the form of a letter. The letter writing portrays a personal and an aesthetic encounter as well as an artistic response to a video recorded on the phone – as a memory, a document, (an abstract) souvenir from the travel. In the letters we weave together memories and thoughts of our mutual interest in memory, reflections on the Bridges of Remembrance and artistic friendship.
The Correspondences become a metaphor for memory and memory politics: private memories or memories one is only witness to, a projection of what is hidden, what is hard to grasp when coming from another context, what remembrance and memory is reconciled with, what is remembered and what is not.
The visitors are invited to watch the video and read the letters or also move with the recordings of the letters through the exhibition.
Linda Jiayun Gao-Lenders and Janis Jirotka know each other from their collaboration on their project “Jesse James oder was der Kommunismus war” (LICHTHOF Theater, 2021-22), which deals with postsocialist memory from the perspective of two generations. Their work and interest combines artistic research with auto/ethnographic, autofictional methods of co-authorship, memory politics and feminist storytelling.