Memory is retrospective per se. It does not commence before the experience it recollects has concluded. As the past’s presence in today’s present it shapes our understanding of history. Yet over time, memory based on experience is transmuted into a past that eludes such experience. This transformation is as much one of distance as of quality: experience becomes fact, and what we have witnessed turns into an objective matter. The living memory makes way for a collective one. This collective memory resorts to material supports in which it becomes manifest: files and archives, films and photographs. Thus, despite all efforts to objectify history there is no singular memory, only a plural understanding of history shaped by the interests of our present.

Yet there are apparent images of historical events in which complex issues are iconographically compressed. But the constant repetition of these same images reduces their semantic impact until they are but a retrievable icon of a past event. The digital world of images accelerates this process. On the one hand, the Internet doesn’t forget anything that has been stored in it once, on the other hand, such a large number of images and snap-shots are taken that each event seems to be replaced immediately by the successive one. Smartphone applications such as “Snapchat” that delete each message within a few seconds illustrate the paradox of conservation and forgetting, and promote a life in the here and now. How does this massive image production – as opposed to oral history, books, letters, even emails – change our collective recollection?

Venue of the exhibition will be Belgrade City Museum, the former Military Academy in the city centre. Erected in 1899/1900 and abandoned for several years, the building provides an ideal setting for an exhibition that blends present and past itself.

Berlin based architect Roger Bundschuh will design the exhibition display. In addition to the exhibition, Brussels based curator Goran Petrović, director of Kran Film Collective (Brussels / Copenhagen), will compile a parallel film program.

October Salon is organised and produced by the Cultural Center of Belgrade, financed by the city of Belgrade and supported by the Ministry of Culture and Information of the Republic of Serbia. This year’s 55th October Salon is developed in cooperation with Kunsthalle Wien.

Curated by Nicolaus Schafhausen & Vanessa Joan Müller

Credits: 55th October Salon / Courtesy the artist

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