eating is art

taste and memory

the renaissance of the theater of memory

The Renaissance of the Theater of Memory by Peter Matussek

Giulio Camillo (1480 - 1544) was as well-known in his era as Bill Gates is now. Just like Gates he cherished a vision of a universal Storage and Retrieval System, and just like Microsoft Windows, his ‘Theatre of the Memory’ was, despite constant revision, never completed. Camillo’s legendary Theatre of Memory remained only a fragment, its benefits only an option for the future. When it was finished, the user - so he predicted - would have access to the knowledge of the whole universe. On account of his promising invention, Camillo’s contemporaries called him ‘the divine’. For others, like Erasmus or the Parisian scholars, he was just a ‘quack’, but also this only shows that his reception was as strong as is the case with the computer gurus of our days. Still, Camillo was forgotten immediately after his death. No trace is left of his spectacular databank - except a short treatise which he dictated on his deathbed and which was formulated in the future tense: ‘L’Idea del Theatro’ (1550).
It was only in the computer age that Camillo’s name reappeared out of oblivion - at first sporadically in a few specialised articles in the fifties, then with increasing intensity and enthusiasm, until Camillo became a real hero of books and congresses, and even of television programmes[1] and Internet appearances[2] . How did the renaissance of this Renaissance encyclopaedist come about?
The catalyst was a chance occurrence: Ernst Gombrich, the director of the Warburg Institute in London gave Camillo’s treatise to his colleague Frances Yates to read. She studied this short work thoroughly and was so fascinated that she not only brought the ‘Theatro’ back to life in her mind’s eye, but also made a reconstructional drawing of it in accordance with Camillo’s instructions. The result formed the basis of a book on the history of the art of memory, which became one of the most influential works of cultural studies of recent decades.[3] Further attempts at a reconstruction followed that of Yates, and their variety demonstrates how little we know about Camillo.
The objective knowledge we do have can be summarised very briefly. The structure was a wooden building, probably as large as a single room, constructed like a Vitruvian amphitheatre. The visitor stood on the stage and gazed into the auditorium, whose tiered, semicircular construction was particularly suitable for housing the memories in a clearly laid-out fashion - seven sections, each with seven arches spanning seven rising tiers. The seven sections were divided according to the seven planets known at the time - they represented the divine macrocosm of alchemical astrology. The seven tiers that rose up from them, coded by motifs from classical mythology, represented the seven spheres of the sublunary down to the elementary microcosm. On each of these stood emblematic images and signs, next to compartments for scrolls. Using an associative combination of the emblematically coded division of knowledge, it had to be possible to reproduce every imaginable micro and macrocosmic relationship in one’s own memory. Exactly how this worked remains a mystery of the hermetic occult sciences on which Camillo based his notion.
However, what makes Yates’ study so fascinating is not so much her attempt to unveil the mystery - because this has since been disputed in further research - but a much bolder hypothesis which she advanced only in a cautious aside: the essential connection between this Renaissance scholar’s combinational data construction and the operation of today’s digital calculator. This hypothesis met with general approval. Umberto Eco labelled Camillo as a cabbalistic programmer[4] , Lina Bolzoni called his data construction the ‘ultimate computer’[5] , Hartmut Winkler derived an entire media theory from ‘L’Idea del Theatro’[6] and Stephen Boyd Davis considered it to be the historical forerunner of the design of a virtual reality.[7]
But are we not doing Camillo’s ominous theatre an injustice by equating it with the Docuverse of the computer age?
One argument for the historical connection is that, for some time now, we have been able to observe a shift in the prevalent model of human as well as digital memory: from a repository to a theatrical stage.[8] Memories no longer seem to us to constitute a passive inventory for deposit and withdrawal; rather, they seem far more like actors in a succession of changing stage settings. A telling metaphor shift in the neuro-sciences goes hand in hand with corresponding changes in the ways we speak about computers. In the wake of advances in interactive applications, the function of digital technology is no longer described merely in terms of "storage and retrieval," but rather in terms of the performativeness of images in motion.
In this connection, one of the most influential books about contemporary computer interface design is entitled "Computers as theatre"[9] ; but its author, Brenda Laurel, was not the first one to propagate this new way of looking at computers. The history of the newer interface technology similarly begins with the "Spatial Data Management System", that was developed in the late 1970s by Richard Bolt and Nicholas Negroponte at the MIT.It allowed the user, sitting in a cockpit, to switch back and forth between different screens whose contents he could zoom toward or away from, creating the impression of navigating through a "dataland."[10]
This new interface put to new use an old insight of the Roman rhetoric manuals – namely, that the highest degree of mnemonic efficiency is exhibited by techniques involving topographical arrangements of mental images (loci et imagines). As Richard Bolt states: "Intrinsic to the ensemble of studies outlined in the proposal was a study recalling the ancient principle of using spatial cueing as an aid to performance and memory." He called it the "Simonides Effect"[11] , alluding to the Greek poet Simonides of Keos, to whom the Roman rhetoricians attributed the invention of the ancient art of memory. The Macintosh User Interface is, as Nicholas Negroponte has implied, also based on this sort of Simonides Effect.[12]
It is true that the Human Interface Guidelines,[13] which were developed by Apple's Human Interface Group during the eighties, could well have been borrowed from the traditional teachings of rhetorical ars memoria. In addition to the basic "See-and-Point" principle, which recalls the ancient loci et imagines, the most important key words in the Guidelines are "Feedback and Dialogue", "Consistency" and "Perceived Stability". In the Rhetorica Ad Herennium we read that rote learning is most effective "when we [employ] not mute and indistinct images, but rather ones that set something in motion" (Apple's "Feedback and Dialogue"); these actuating images (imagines agentes) must be "arranged at certain fixed locations" (Apple's "Consistency"); and finally, says the Rhetorica, there must be no opportunity for us to "accidentally be mistaken in the number of locations" (Apple's "Perceived Stability").[14] Psychological studies in the workplace have confirmed that these principles considerably increase the ease with which the use of operating systems and software applications is learned.[15]
It is evident that, considering the explosion in user-designated storage options, the particular architecture of memory suggested by the desktop metaphor will have been put out of joint. And if we stick to the terms of our historical analogy, we might say that the current situation corresponds to the phase in which the classical memory palaces of antiquity gradually collapsed under the pressure of increasing amounts of amassed knowledge.
This is precisely the situation in which Camillo found himself with regard to the scholastic treatises of the Middle Ages: They curbed the remnant of a productive imagination in images from the memory in favour of a mechanical rote learning of prayers, virtues, and lists of mental objects.[16] It is here that Camillo comes in with his attempt to reanimate the now mechanical and uncreative memoria. He reminded his contemporaries that the function of imagines agentes was not just the "painting of an entire scene”,[17] but rather the stimulation of imagination through their agency. Camillo expressly emphasizes the matter that concerns him: "to find, in these seven comprehensive and diverse units, an order that keeps the mind keen and shakes up the memory."[18]
So these images from the memory were no longer purely a means of better remembering, but a medium for better concentration to the benefit of empathic recollection. For this purpose, he transplanted the arena of ars memoria from the traditional treasuries (thesauri) and palaces of memory to the Vitruvian theatre. The "drama" that he produced on this stage made use of the teachings of antiquity, but dressed them up in hermetic, cabbalistic costume.
But Camillo also departed from the tradition in one other aspect, in that he reversed the topography of structure of neo-classical theatre. With this inversion, the efficiency of the ancient architecture of memory could be significantly increased. Its user could navigate through the three-dimensional arrangement of his own will and vary his view between near and far accordingly.
No doubt there is a structural affinity between such ideas and the digital theater of memory. For some years now, there has been work on 3D visualisation processes: vector-driven cartographies such as Hyper-G, VRML, Hyperbolic Tree, Hotsauce, Flythrough, etc., which alter the depicted space with every movement of the mouse, joy stick or data glove. Such means are also used to attempt to increase the number of memory locations without creating disorientation.
But how is this related to the cosmological context in which these ideas were valid? Is this not entirely different from the post-metaphysical situation of memory architecture? Remarkably enough the opposite is true, because today's technology produces similar effects: The "Pan-Mnemism"[19] of our time is nourished by the dream of a universal, encyclopaedic machine. The hypertext guru Ted Nelson, for example, has something comparable in mind:
"Universal or grand hypertext […] means […] an accessible great universe of linked documents and graphics […]. This is an idea many people now share – the idea that we can get to everything, add to everything, keep track of everything, tie everything together, that we can have it all."[20]

What is at stake here is no longer merely the retrieval of profane information, the functional organization and recall of locations in the memory, but the spellbinding attraction of a fantasy of omnipotence: having the sum total of the world's knowledge at one's disposal – a move that his patron, the King of France, surely appreciated. And not only that: the spiritual inclinations of times past also make their reappearance in the digital theatre of memory. Brenda Laurel says:
"[...] for virtual reality to fulfill its highest potential, we must reinvent the sacred spaces where we collaborate with reality in order to transform it and ourselves."[21]

Now, it is in the nature of the dream of a total encyclopaedia that it must remain a dream. In this respect, it is worth noting that Camillo's Idea del Theatro was formulated in the future tense – as if the actual theatre of memory was still to be built. Unfinishability is here no shortcoming, but rather an added value; it does not diminish, but rather intensifies the mystery. The World Wide Web also owes its aura as a pan-mnemistic docuverse to the sfumato of a diffuse presentation of data, whose incompleteness stimulates us to act on hunches and intuitions, and thus produces that feeling of exuberant spatial experience with which passionate web-surfers are filled. The necessarily limited frame of the monitor only augments this experience by its peephole effect; it feeds the voyeuristic fantasy that there is still something infinitely more thrilling to discover than what is actually before one's eyes.
Nevertheless, what differentiates Camillo from today's cybernauts and sheds light on the possibly untapped potential of the digital theater of memory is the fact that his data construction always appears as theatre. The sites and images of his model are not meant to fascinate in an unmediated way, but should rather be reflected on as staged objects.
In contrast, the technical #movement# of images by means of computer animation does not lead to #an activity of# reflection but is perceived passively, in a reflex-like manner; instead of shaking up the memory, it conditions it. Camillo's theatre presents itself as an enclosed space, and, precisely for that reason, incites one to transcend it. On the other hand, the forms of 3D visualization, which give the illusion of endless space, prevent the data-traveller from realizing that the trajectory of his transit is fixed and thus undermine the desire for transcendence. This is because our imaginative activity diminishes in direct proportion to increased activity on the screen.
What is decisive to this difference is not the outer but the inner movement. In computer animation it is directed unambiguously at the consumption of an object; in Camillo’s work, however, the self-reflexive contemplation of the object by a subject also involves a rebound movement back to the subject. This reflexivity is made evident in Camillo's inversion of the theatre structure, which places the objects of memory in the tiers, where they simultaneously return the gaze of the observer while he stands on the stage and constitutes the centre of intellectual activity.
But why would this turnaround not also make Camillo's memory theatre a viable model for turning the digital staging of information into a self-reflective form?
Indeed, in recent years, there have been several artistic attempts to play upon Camillo’s idea. They indicate that an anamnesis of computer-presented data is not encouraged when the interface vanishes, as if it disappeared by immersion under the surface of the water, as is postulated by today’s pioneers of Interface Design, but rather, on the contrary, when the surface is mirrored back to the observer.
Once again, the idea for this comes from Yates’ #study#. Robert Edgar drew Bill Viola’s attention to the book and from then on Viola proclaimed Camillo the forerunner of digital ‘data space’.[22] It was on this basis that he produced his spatial installation ‘Theatre of Memory’ (1985), in which the processes of electrical connection in human memory are associated with the electronics of video. In the same year, Robert Edgar himself programmed his ‘Memory Theatre One’ on an ‘Apple II’, which used the then modest possibilities of computer graphics to reconstruct Camillo’s amphitheatrical data architecture. In the mid-nineties, Agnes Hegedus read this influential book together with her partner Jeffrey Shaw. She constructed a ‘Memory Theatre VR’ (1997), which used the new possibilities of computer simulation. On the inside walls of an accessible rotunda, which acted as a sort of ‘cave’, mobile panoramic images concerning the history of artificial memory were projected using a 3D mouse. And since 1998, the performance artist Emil Hvratin has carried out several projects in which the information scenarios of our era are questioned on the basis of Camillo’s work.
What do we learn from these reflections on the state of the computer age? To what extent do they give us a definite answer about the way information will be staged in the future?
As stated at the beginning, the Idea del Theatro is #has?# left much in the dark. Its "revelation" begins with a reference to the significance of silence in the face of divine secrets. And no doubt, Camillo's mystique only profited from the fact that he divulged just bits and pieces of information about how his theatre was made. Only as long as he continued to work on its expansion, to endeavour constantly to overhaul its architecture and iconology, could he have given himself and others the feeling of being on the trail of the secret of the alchemistic transformation of memory into recollection.

[1] Bolzoni, Lina: Il Teatro della Memoria; television film, 1990.
[2] Comp. the annotated list of links under www.sfb-performativ.de/seiten/b7_links.html.
[3] Frances Yates, The Art of Memory, London, 1996, p. 114 ff.
[4] Eco, Umberto: review of: Mario Turello, Daniele Cortolezzis: Anima Artificiale. Il Teatro magico di Giulio Camillo. in: L’Espresso, 14.8.1988.
[5] Bolzoni, Lina: The Play of Images. The Art of Memory from its Origins to the Seventeenth Century, in: Corsi, Pietro (ed.): The Enchanted Loom. Chapters in the History of Neuroscience, New York/Oxford, 1991, p. 23.
[6] Winkler, Hartmut [1994]: Medien - Speicher - Gedächtnis. Online: www.uni-paderborn.de/~winkler/gedacht.html.
[7] Davis, Stephen Boyd [1996]: The Design of Virtual Environments with particular reference to VRML. Online: www.man.ac.uk/MVC/SIMA/vrml_design/title.html.
[8] Cf. Bernard J. Baars, Das Schauspiel des Denkens, Stuttgart, 1998.
[9] Brenda Laurel: Computers as Theatre; Reading (Mass.) 1991.
[10] Richard A. Bolt: Spatial Data Management; Cambridge (Mass.) 1979, p.13.
[11] Ibid. 8.
[12] Nicholas Negroponte, Total digital. Die Welt zwischen 0 und 1 oder Die Zukunft der Kommunikation, Munich, 1995, p. 135 ff.
[13] Apple Computer Inc., Human Interface Guidelines: The Apple Desktop Interface, Reading (Mass.), 1987.
[14] Rhetorica Ad Herrenium III, XVIIf., Apple Computer p. 3 ff.
[15] Cf., e.g., Alexandra Altmann, "Direkte Manipulation: Empirische Befunde zum Einfluß der Benutzeroberfläche auf die Erlernbarkeit von Textsystemen," A&O: Zeitschrift für Arbeits- und Organisationspsychologie 3 (1987): pp. 108-114.
[16] Cf. Frances Yates, The Art of Memory, London, 1966, p. 114ff.This does not contradict Horst Wenzel's observations on the participatory character of mediaeval memoria in: Horst Wenzel, Hören und Sehen. Schrift und Bild. Kultur und Gedächtnis im Mittelalter, Munich, 1995.
[17] Willhelm Schmidt-Biggeman, "Robert Fludds Theatrum memoriae," Ars memorativa. Zur kulturgeschichtlichen Bedeutung der Gedächtniskunst 1400-1750, eds. Jörg Jochen Berns and Wolfgang Neuber [Tübingen, 1993] p. 157.
[18] "la memoria percossa": 1550, p. 11.
[19] Elisabeth von Samsonow, "Zeit bei Giordano Bruno oder: Zum Verhältnis von Kosmochronie und Mnemochronie," eds. Eric Alliez et al., Metamorphosen der Zeit , Munich, 1999, p. 140.
[20] Cited in: Robert E. Horn, Mapping Hypertext: Analysis, Linkage, and Display of Knowledge for the Next Generation of On-Line Text and Graphics, Waltham, 1989, p. 259.
[21] Laurel, ibid. p. 196 ff.
[22] Bill Viola [1983]: Will There be Condominiums in Data Space? In: Ders.: Reasons for Knocking at an Empty House, London, 1995, pp. 98-111.

the memory machine

the memory machine: sound and memory at the british museum


The Memory Machine is a context-, people- and site-specific interactive sound installation. It has been developed as a collaboration between two composers, Cathy Lane and Nye Parry, who share an interest in sound, oral history, and memory. The Memory Machine is an ongoing project which, most recently, was part of the British Museum's 250th anniversary exhibition entitled The Museum of the Mind; Art and Memory in World Cultures.This paper discusses the background and ideas behind the Memory Machine within the context of the composers' work. The development of the project in collaboration with the British Museum is described and an evaluation of some of the issues around the public exhibition of the piece is given as well as a full technical description of the different elements of the installation.


The Memory Machine developed from the compositional ideas that informed earlier works including Hidden Lives 2: The House of Memory, a site specific work commissioned by the 2001 Stoke Newington Festival, Hackney and Hidden Lives commissioned by Institut International de Musique Electroacoustique de Bourges in 1999.

Each of these works use spoken word or oral history as their main compositional material and are informed by individual and collective memory. Few composers are working so extensively with either spoken word or with memory.

The Memory Machine differs from the works above in that it is an interactive installation. It collects spoken memory contributions from gallery visitors who are stimulated to remember through hearing the output of the Memory Machine which is an ever - changing sonic collage of the personal reminiscence and shared history contributions. The material is fragmented, layered, mixed up and transformed providing an aural metaphor for the workings of human memory.


REFERENCES
Bachelard, G. 1994. The Poetics of Space. Boston: Beacon Press.

Caygill, M. 2002. The Story of the British Museum. London: The British Museum Press.

Fentress, J., and Wickham, C. 1992. Social Memory. Oxford: Blackwell.

Kavanagh, G. 2000. Dream Spaces: Memory and the Museum. London: Leicester University Press.

MacGregor, N. 2003. Introduction to Mack, J. The Museum of the Mind: Art and Memory in World Cultures. London: The British Museum Press.

Murray Schafer, R. 1977. The Soundscape: Our Sonic Environment and the Tuning of the World. New York: Knopf.

Putnam, J. 2001. Art and Artifact: The Museum as Medium. London: Thames and Hudson.

Truax, B. 1984. Acoustic Communication. New Jersey: Ablex Publishing Corporation.

Yates, F. 1992. The Art of Memory. London: Pimlico.

between art and architecture: the memory works of maya lin

Maya Lin announced herself to the nation in 1981 by winning a contest to design the Vietnam War Memorial. She was still a 21-year-old senior at Yale, but her work ignited one of the country’s most bitter disputes over a public monument. Lin intended the design—a stark, V-shaped slash of polished black granite inscribed with nearly 58,000 names of Americans who died in the war—to resemble “a wound in the earth that is slowly healing.” Her minimalist, nontraditional approach left many angry, confused or both. Moreover, some were upset that the nation’s memorial to its war in southeast Asia was created by an Asian American.

Time has sided with Lin. Each year some four million people flock to the site—reputedly the most visited memorial in the country—to see their faces reflected in the surface as they leave commemorative gifts or make paper rubbings of a loved one’s name. Since her initial triumph, Lin has created other major memorials, such as the Civil Rights Memorial in Montgomery, Ala., and public and corporate art installations. She has also lent her gifts to the museum world, creating art for exhibitions and designing buildings such as New York’s Museum for African Art and Museum of Chinese in America (MOCA), slated to open this fall in Chinatown. Museum senior editor Leah Arroyo visited Lin in her Soho studio to discuss museums, memory, identity and finding your way home.


MUSEUM: IT’S BEEN REPORTED THAT THE REDESIGN OF THE MUSEUM OF CHINESE IN AMERICA IS THE FIRST CHINESE-RELATED PROJECT YOU’VE WORKED ON.
Maya Lin: That’s actually not quite true—I worked with one of the founders of MOCA, Jack Tchen, when I designed the Asian/Pacific/American [APA] center for New York University in 1998, which I think has since been turned into the journalism school, much to everybody’s—including mine and Jack’s—annoyance. But we won’t go there. APA was the first time I designed a work of architecture for an Asian Pacific [project]. But it was all-inclusive, not specifically Chinese American.

SO IS MOCA A PROJECT YOU COULDN’T HAVE DONE 10 OR 15 YEARS AGO?
Maybe 10 years ago, but certainly not 20 years ago. I basically didn’t even realize I was Chinese. I was a kid from Ohio. I’ll never forget it: Somebody asked me, “Well, do you think it’s ironic that you’re of Asian descent and you just did the Vietnam Memorial?” and I looked this guy in the eye and I said, “It’s completely irrelevant.” I didn’t even realize there would be prejudice against me. I was that naive, because I grew up in academia. It’s not what you look like; it’s not the color of your hair. It took me 20 years to realize how people perceive you, but also, because I grew up surrounded by white people, I didn’t realize I was Chinese, believe it or not. Duh. A lot of critics would say, “Oh, there’s so much Zen in her work,” and I’d be saying, “You’re just reading into it—that’s you, not me.” And it’s safer. In my 30s, mid-30s, maybe it was after I had kids—you begin to really want to go back and understand the cultural underpinnings of what makes you.

YOU’VE SAID THAT THE MUSEUM’S DESIGN IS “NOT SPECIFICALLY TRYING TO ATTACH ITSELF TO WHAT YOU COULD CALL AN “ASIAN AESTHETIC.” WHAT DID YOU MEAN?
I think there are stereotypes of what Zen is and what Asian is, and what does that mean? You can go into any Chinese restaurant downtown, it’s one look; you can go into some of these Asian fusion places, and there’s a certain style. You want to be careful not to fall into any stereotypes. The old stereotype would be red lacquer. Red is not a part of our palette, so we’ve introduced our own palette.

As an architect or as an artist, my aesthetic voice—there’s a simplicity that I’ve always loved. One could say that I’m influenced by my cultural heritage, but at the same time, I’m born here, I’m American, and I think it gets down to the roots of what this museum is about: identity issues. Having been born in the United States, I’m as American as any other American is. What does your cultural background, your parents’ cultural background, bring to how you will then see the world? A lot of what’s going on inside the museum is asking those questions of identity. My work tends to introduce all-natural materials, very much a remove from the busy-ness of life. There’s a quieting down. It’s almost—I don’t want to say meditative, because a lot of people have said that, and I don’t know if they’re projecting, “She’s Asian; she makes meditative spaces.” But at the same time I am very drawn to creating a sense of calm. A moment of stillness. And maybe that is slightly a more Asian aesthetic, whatever that means.

SO WHAT PRODUCES A SENSE OF IDENTITY?
I would hope that the content of what the museum is talking about is, “What does it mean to be Chinese American?” I know that they’ve asked in the past, “Where is home?” Obviously, for me home is Athens, Ohio, in America, but at the same time, in my 20s and 30s I realized how much my aesthetic is influenced by my parents’ aesthetics. And how much were they influenced by the fact that they were born and raised in Shanghai and Beijing? I’m looking at one of my father’s pots right behind us; my mother was a poet. Though they never sat us down and taught us about Taoism, when I finally did pick up a book on Taoism and Confucianism—which was much, much later in life, because I was absolutely reticent in wanting to intellectualize what my cultural background might be—I was stunned because it made me realize that certain things had come through in my work.

How much do your kids pick up on fundamentals? Do we tell you what to think, are we didactic in our teaching, or do we give you a well of water and you drink from that well, and what you came out with is . . . I’m not going to tell you exactly what conclusion you should come to. That would be horrible to me. I have no right to do that, but I can absolutely present you with the facts and let you come away with them. Some would say that that is a fairly Asian or Eastern way of being. One could argue that the Eastern way of thinking is seeking. It’s asking you to seek. At times it’s asking you to seek within yourself. But I’ve deliberately not wanted to read up a lot about this because I don’t believe for me it’s an intellectualized process.

IN DESIGNING A MUSEUM, WHERE DO YOU START—WITH THE COLLECTIONS, A VISION OF THE BUILDING, THE MISSION?
The mission, I think, with MOCA, which is making a very large move from being a very small institution—in the new space of 14,000 square feet, the old MOCA could fit into one tiny room. What we discussed at the start with the curators, with the director, with the board: What is the changing mission of MOCA? You not only have a building that is changing, you’ve got an institution that is growing equally. It originated as a grassroots, community-based organization saving the history of New York’s Chinatown. Its dream now is that it’s going to become a national museum of Chinese American history. What does that mean? These are the questions I’ve been thinking about—not just as the designer or the architect; I’m also on their board now. I’ve become more vested; at times I can’t separate my job as the architect from my dedication to them as a trustee.

SO WHAT DESIGN EMERGED?
We were kind of blessed with two buildings that have been combined with a sky-lit courtyard at the heart of it, and we’re leaving that very raw and old. The permanent exhibition revolves around this courtyard. On the six windows looking into the courtyard, three portraits will be projected in each window, and as you walk by, you see the changing face of Chinese American immigrants to this country. You start with 1850s, pre-Gold Rush; you go to the Gold Rush era; you go to the ’30s and ’40s; and if you walk up to each window you’ll hear the story, the monologue of what this person’s life was. It might end with a portrait of a Chinese girl who’s been adopted. We have come to this country in separate waves—each wave is from a different part of China, coming to a different part of America, and it’s still going on. We’re in, I think, the sixth wave of immigration; it’s the business interests going back and forth from China to the U.S., as well as this newest group.

One of the outreach programs at MOCA will be to talk to some of the parents who have adopted Chinese children and invite them in. “What is your story? Tell us your story, and we’ll add that to the online museum as well.” As you enter the building, I’ve created something called a Journey Wall, which is a bronzed tiled wall. It’s for people who can’t give a lot of money but want to be a part of the journey. You will be able to put your family name in, where you came from in China, where you ended up in the United States. I’m from Ohio, and every time people say “Where are you from?” and I say “Ohio,” they look at me like [She puts her index fingers on the outer corners of her eyelids and pulls outward], “You, Ohio?” Because they want to put you in either San Francisco or New York; that inherently is a stereotype. So this Journey Wall will not work unless I get a true authentic demographic with people from Iowa, Wisconsin, Minneapolis, Georgia. I think if you can tweak what people assume, they’ll look at you for the first time. They’ll pay attention. They’ll go, “Iowa? Georgia? What is going on here?”

AND THE MUSEUM IS EXPANDING ITS WEBSITE TO COMPLEMENT THE REOPENING.
I think the key is, the online museum won’t just try to say, “Here’s what the permanent museum is doing.” Say you’re someone in Hawaii or someone in Iowa and you can’t come here. It will engage you in the virtual world as well. That is the opportunity, I think, to really open up the doors to what it means to be a national museum. Outreach is so much a part of it. Right now we’re really beginning to think about what the online museum can be, how it segues and interfaces with the physical museum.

There’ll be an online Journey Wall, which I’m seeing as a work of art. I’m going to animate it with Flash so that you can enter your stories. Growing up in Ohio, maybe I felt a little isolated, didn’t realize why, felt different, didn’t realize why. My brother and I were the only Chinese Americans in Athens, Ohio, and maybe it would be nice to be able to go online and share your story and know that there are other kids just like you, feeling maybe a little out of place.

Oddly enough, it’s an art piece, but it’s also like some of the memory works I’ve done. I’ve been drawn to works at times—the Vietnam Memorial; the Civil Rights Memorial; The Women’s Table; the Confluence Project, which is happening throughout the Pacific Northwest and deals with Native American issues; and then finally Missing [an installation at the California Academy of Sciences], which will deal with environmental issues. I’m very interested in history and in using history to teach us so that maybe we learn from our history. Maybe that’s because my parents are both educators. I’ve actually stopped calling them memorials, because I think memorials deal much more with an assumption of death. I call them memory works because they always incorporate history—how relevant history is to today. It allows you to reflect, and obviously it’s about the future. How does the past teach us and guide us to a different future?

TELL ME MORE ABOUT MISSING, YOUR LATEST MEMORY WORK.
Missing is not about the dodo bird; it’s about the things that are literally disappearing before our eyes that you’re not even thinking of. So I go from the dodo bird very quickly to scale, size of species, the abundance of species, to one of the facts I’ve come across: The top 20 songbirds in this country have diminished between 50 percent to 80 percent in numbers [in the last 40 years]. The sound of songbirds in our backyards when we were children, the landscape of sound, has significantly changed, and we weren’t aware of it. Now, if I can get you to be aware of it, of something that you didn’t even think of as missing, maybe you’re going to care enough to wake up. And then it ends with all the things we can do, both to help groups that are doing the scientific expert work but also concerning what our consumer practices are doing to these habitats. I’m linking our everyday activities to wildlife.

DID THE ACADEMY SUGGEST THE PROJECT TO YOU?
The California Academy of Sciences commissioned me to create a work of art, and I’m doing a wire landscape sculpture. But at the same time I have wanted to end the memorial series; the fifth and last one will be Missing. It will not just exist at the California Academy of Sciences—imagine a monument that can jump form. It’ll be a book, a website, and it will touch down at a couple of institutions, of which the California Academy will be the first. Everyone thinks a monument is singular and static, so I’m going to get you to rethink what a monument can be. What if it is transmutable and can jump from a book site to a website to a physical place, to a table at the California Academy out-of-doors? You walk up to it, and it’s interactive, and it’ll teach you about things that are disappearing, things that we need to help.

WHERE ELSE WILL IT BE GOING?
I’m talking with groups right now. I won’t put on too many permanent ones, but imagine—it might not be physical; it might be a projection screen. Can I dematerialize a monument completely and have it become pure content? Because what are these pieces about? They are about information. And teaching us. And sharing facts. And then, yes, you’re going to draw certain conclusions from them.

WHAT DO MUSEUMS OFFER THAT OTHER PUBLIC SPACES DON’T?
They live in the world of not-for-profits. Their mission is to educate; it’s to change the way people think—for the better, one would hope. Like schools, like libraries, museums are in that wonderful world where it’s all about giving back to society. Their whole duty is to raise awareness, to teach us something we don’t know, which is so different from a private corporation or anyone who has a motivation that is about themselves. The museum is about the person who’s walking in the door.

ENVIRONMENTALISM IS AN IMPORTANT CAUSE FOR YOU. HOW HAS IT SHAPED YOUR WORK?
Both in my art and architecture work, I’ve been very committed to green design. All my works ask you to look at the land differently. Perhaps if I can get you to see it differently, you’ll pay closer attention to it. So, using science and technology, sonar resonancing, NASA satellite views of the earth, I make art that is very much letting you look at the world through the lens of technology. Is it any different from landscape painters of the 18th century? They were presenting a view of the world, and their means were just their eyes looking out. We can look at the world through a microscope, through a satellite, through a telescope. So I’ve just got a lot more technological tools at my disposal to be able to take a look at the land differently.

One of the other things about MOCA is—I’ll get a funder to help—I want it LEED [Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design] rated. They’re committed to it, to environmental issues. My stuff gets at least silver or gold, depending upon how much money the institution has. I think it is incredibly important to send the right message to people. Especially right now, America and China, we’re the biggest per-capita users of energy, and our consumption is crazy. China, though, has overtaken the world in global emissions. We both have to change. And so I’m doing whatever I can to say, “Hey, we can all be building green, and it’s incredibly important, and it will save you money and it’s really great for the environment.” Everywhere I go, I’ve been incorporating recycled materials, maximizing daylight, reducing energy usage and light for years and years. It’s my one big cause.

WHAT PERSUADES YOU TO TAKE ON A PARTICULAR ARCHITECTURAL PROJECT? I NOTICED, FOR EXAMPLE, THAT YOU DON’T EVEN HAVE A WEBSITE. BUT THEN, YOU DON’T EXACTLY NEED TO ADVERTISE.
You know what—I’m about to put up a website, but the reason I’ve held off is, actually, I don’t want any more [work]. I’m so busy. My clients have been very patient. I didn’t want to be a big firm [the studio has five staff members]. It gets back down to the environment, for me. Nothing in nature grows exponentially forever. My attitude is, well, you can have a 100-man office, and that’s great, and there are a lot of people out there that want to live that way. I don’t know; I just would rather have three projects that I’m making myself. The hardest thing in my life has been to stay small, because our tendency in this world is to get bigger and bigger. Because I split my time between art and architecture, if I had a [large] firm, I wouldn’t be able to do the art.

So when do I take on a project? Some of it is happenstance—a friend knows a friend and it works out perfect, timing-wise. And other times, the timing isn’t right and I’m too busy with the architecture or the art. At times you think, well, you can’t really practice your art of architecture because sometimes the budgets are so small you’re lucky to get to change the front door. But at the same time, I’ve always said yes to one not-for-profit at a time; that could very well be my parents and the way they brought me up. They were both academics, so maybe there’s a reverse snobbery with academia. All I know is that I can’t say no to certain things, but I can’t take on more than one at any given time, because you do devote a lot with a very small staff to it, and you have to be a little careful. My attitude is, design shouldn’t just be for the very wealthy. I love helping out a not-for-profit that doesn’t have the means. We can’t just relegate design to the highest budgets. I usually do the not-for-profits on a shoestring, so this one [MOCA] I’ve gotten a little carried away with.

Other than that, I’ll take on architectural projects that are of real interest to me. I’m pretty fortunate; I can basically say yes only to what I want to do. I think the difference in the making of art and the making of architecture is that we draw architecture up and somebody else executes it. For my large-scale works, I’m not on the bulldozer, but I’ve made maquette [model] after maquette, groomed it and groomed it. Whereas you don’t make a blueprint for a drawing; you just start drawing. I just start sculpting in the back [of the studio], and it’s vital to keeping me grounded, you know? In order to do “Systematic Landscapes”—it’s been eight years since my last show—I basically didn’t take on any architectural commissions for three years. Except for MOCA, which I had to. It’s like, here, I’ll run your benefit and I’ll join your board and I’ll help you fundraise, because I just believe in it.

YOU’VE BEEN CALLED BOTH A DESIGNER AND AN ARCHITECT, IN ADDITION TO BEING AN ARTIST. HOW IS THE TERM “DESIGNER” DIFFERENT FROM “ARCHITECT”?
ML: I’m not licensed as an architect, so I technically cannot label myself as an architect, although I would say that we pretty much produce with architects of record supervising. I love architecture and I love building architecture, but technically, legally, I’m not licensed, so I’m a designer. I wouldn’t say I’m relegated to interior design, though. When I take it on, I pretty much take it on.

The interesting thing is, I get to make architecture sometimes and put art in architecture, and other times I’m
acting strictly as an artist and I get to install works in other people’s buildings. It’s fun to be working on a museum on one hand and then run out to San Diego to help install “Systematic Landscapes.”

WHAT ADVICE WOULD YOU OFFER A 21-YEAR-OLD MAYA LIN?
It’s hard to say, because in a funny way I think the biggest potential pitfall for me was that people were always asking for stuff, and I wasn’t ready and I was awed. I’m slow—again, I’ve taken eight years since my last show—and I think it confused a lot of people who wanted more. I think I could have done it, but I don’t think the work would have matured the way it has. I think that was the biggest pitfall, and I think I’ve sidestepped it.

This article was published in Museum, July/August 2008.

zhang dali photo images

zhang dali on china’s memory hole

Chinese artist Zhang Dali explores China’s memory hole

In a talk for Shanghai FCC (at OV Gallery in Shanghai) Chinese artist Zhang Dali introduced his long term research work into China’s doctoring of photography for propaganda purposes. As a part of his research Zhang achieved access to archives within the offices of China Pictorial, a semiotic propaganda magazine distributed world wide in numerous languages. This access provided a treasure trove of original doctored photographs, with editors notes, guidelines, and cutting instructions. “The older technicians are now in their 80s, and the younger people there do not pay so much attention to this material, so I got access through some relationships,” Zhang said.

As Zhang explained, many photos were changed many times, and he said it was often difficult to ascertain which is the original image. “ I am an artist, this needs some historian, or political scientist, to study,” Zhang said.

Zhang has documented the painstaking process of changing photos, usually by very fine brush work, to change historical photos into colour, eradicate seemingly non-aesthetic elements, and eliminate political unworthies in the photos. The technicians, working in China’s newspaper and media offices, usually took a week to change one photo. Among the numerous highlights, Zhang has a People’s Daily photo of Mao’s funeral, showing the Gang of Four in the front row of the mourners, and a subsequent photo published a week later, showing the four vanished from the photo. Numerous other political figures vanished from photos during China’s tumultuous purges, notably Peng Dehuai, who was vanished from a photo with Mao, after informing Mao the people were starving to death in the famine caused by the Great Leap Forward. Zhang said he found it very disconcerting people could be vanished from history, but after his initial shock, he began to admire the technicians work, and critiqued some of the sloppier versions, where legs or other elements were not particularly well done, after vanishing a figure in the foreground. The depth of this strange censorship was best illustrated by some China Pictorial photographs, with remote farmers in the distance being eliminated from the picture as China Pictorial could not publish any photos of people with bad class backgrounds, even though they were unrecognizable under broad straw hats.

When asked by the Art Newspaper Shanghai Eye why Chairman’s Mao’s mole on his chin was often not visible in photos, Zhang said that editors often reduced it, “as they thought it was ugly.”

Zhang recently showed these photographs at the Guandong Museum of Art. He said a large part of the audience hadn’t been aware that these well known photos, such as Edgar Snow’s famous portrait of Mao, once visible in every home, had been retouched several times over the decades, making Mao increasingly svelte “and less anxious looking.”

Zhang also pointed out that this changing of photographs to match historical orthodoxy was not unique to China. “Lincoln was short, and in one photograph his head was placed on the torso of a tall general,” he said.


Above are my notes on Zhang Dali’s talk at OV Gallery.

You may remember, OV Gallery was shut not long after this talk , any how it just reopened on June 22nd so if you are interested in seeing this work pop along for a look, but remember not to ask for a catalogue.

I originally wrote this piece for art newspaper, but after the closure the story morphed into a wider censorship story. hmm, artist talking about censorship in the 60s and 70s prompts censorship in 2010.

This show which includes recent photo work by Zhang Dali was closed, and OV Gallery ‘closed indefinitely,’ by authorities.
Nb Zhang Dali showed this work recently in Guandong Museum of Art.

THis has been picked up by a couple of the local English language mags/webzines, That’s here and Shanghaiist here.

And the Wall Street Journal here.

Jun 24th, 2010 | By Chris | shanghaieye


Re-Visioning History
OV Gallery Press Release
May 22-July 17

As Shanghai positions itself as a futuristic metropolis for the occasion of the World Expo, and historical neighborhoods give way to cool reflective glass, there is no better time to ponder the past. Who writes history and how is it constructed, preserved and obscured?

History is the product of a slow accumulation materials: official records, government reports, magazine articles, and various archival photographs and objects which bear the stamp of that era but don’t necessarily reflect any tangible truth. As time goes by, various historians and cultural theorists construct narratives based on these materials which often reflect as much about the era of writing and the identity of the writer as they do about history.

History, however amounts to more than a pile of yellowed pages lying at the back of a filing cabinet – it involves performative acts of remembrance the writing of text books, the publishing of biographies of national heroes, the filming of period war films, the staging of parades and the recycling of era imagery in niche consumer goods.

“Re-visioning History” seeks not to uncover the “true events” of the past, but to look at how history is depicted and consumed. The group show is anchored by the works of Ren Hong and Zhang Dali and also includes propaganda posters and a series of newly-commissioned works, which take the posters as their inspiration.
Ren Hong explores the faulty nature of memory, with historical images typical of propaganda poster imagery – cast in a variety of bright purples, greens and hot pinks. These idealized, dreamlike renderings are then overlaid with an intricate filigree of symbols which reference the filtering nature of time, which selectively twists our understanding of the past.

The show also features Zhang Dali and his Second History project whereby he displays different versions of photographs which were published in various print media throughout Chinese history. Zhang Dali takes a magnifying glass to history displaying the original photographs (painstakingly procured from Chinese archives) alongside versions of the same photographs which have been altered for propaganda purposes. The differences are evident with certain people being erased from the photos, leafy backgrounds being drawn in and slogans painted on to flags and walls.

The show will also feature a number of historical propaganda posters supplied from the collection of Madame Mao’s Dowry with titles such as, “The Age of Decisive Battle,” “Peasant and Army Studying Together,” and “Safeguard the Orderliness of the Revolution: Transportation is Getting a New Look.”

Local artists will produce their own reinterpretation of these posters using either the themes, the visual elements or the graphic styles, to offer their own views on the topic of history. This element of the exhibition is an open competition with prizes for the top three entries, and the works of all participating artists will be shown in the gallery in a digital slide show.

Short Description for Listings

Re-Visioning History

Zhang Dali, Ren Hong and a selection of local artists examine how history is constructed, distorted and consumed. Ren Hong takes historical imagery and overlays it with intricate patterns. Zhang Dali makes comparisons between original historical photographs and altered versions of those photographs published in magazines. Finally a group of local artists create newly commissioned works based on a selection of political posters culled from the past half century of history.


Shaoxing Lu's OV Gallery became the first art space to be completely shut down by the Culture Bureau since 2000 on Friday, thanks to an apparently controversial exhibition about "re-visioning history

The other headline artist, Zhang Dali, in a project entitled ‘Second History,’ has taken versions of photographs which were published in various print media throughout Chinese history, including the Cultural Revolution, and placed them alongside versions of the same photographs, which have been altered for propaganda purposes. Cult Rev art is nothing new. In fact, it's rather old hat. The Chinese are especially bored by it, even if we Westerners are not. But that did not stop the Culture Bureau seizing Zhang’s catalogs from OV. They also confiscated a print of one of the foreign artists, Shanghai-based Ben Houge, who uses video to capture the layering, erasing and re-construction of history.

wall street journal archive:
dialogue: the graffiti art of 18K by Lyn Stuart
zhang dali: beijing commune
Chinese Propaganda Uncensored by ILARIA MARIA SALA
Photo Tampering Throughout History

china and revolution: history, parody and memory

CHINA'S Cultural Revolution is usually regarded as one of the most philistine periods in world history.

Ordered by Chairman Mao Zedong in 1966, urged on by his wife and the three other members of the "Gang of Four", it is remembered as 10 years of chaos and destruction when Red Guard zealots were let loose to smash forever supposedly liberal bourgeoise sensibilities.

It was a time when artists and intellectuals were targeted as enemies of the communist state, and it ended only with Mao's death in 1976.

So it seems bizarre that a new exhibition has opened at the University of Sydney gallery dedicated to the artistic legacy of the Cultural Revolution.

"Actually there was a lot of art produced during the Cultural Revolution," says the co-curator, Stephanie Hemelryk Donald, the university's honorary professor of Chinese media studies.

Most of it was the equivalent of the Stalinist "agitprop" which dominated Soviet art in the 1930s and 1940s – posters and paintings hammering home an overt political message.

Ten of those original Maoist posters form the core of China and Revolution: History, Parody and Memory.

They may have been designed to communicate with illiterate peasants, says Hemelryk Donald, but the posters were striking and visually literate – which is why so many of them are eagerly sought by Western collectors, including Charles Saatchi.

But the exhibition also explores the legacy of the Chinese agitprop which is influencing a new generations of Chinese artists.

"There was a big Pop Art movement in China during the 1980s," Hemelryk Donald says.

Many of those artists, growing up in the reformist era of led by Deng Xiaoping, produced pastiches of the Cultural Revolution posters.

These too proved a commercial success. "When the imagery was re-imagined as irony, it was taken up very quickly by [Western] advertisers," says Hemelryk Donald. "That classic image of Mao's head, with the rays of the sun around it, has been used by investment bankers."

A group of serious artists – including Liu Dahong, one of four contemporary Chinese artists in the exhibition – have used Maoist imagery to reinterpret the Cultural Revolution as a part of Chinese history which needs to be embraced and explained.

Liu's work Four Seasons, for example, features a divine Mao surrounded by the figures of the zodiac. Hemelryk Donald says, "What he's saying is, 'I don't believe there was chaos, then everything was OK again, so we can put the Cultural Revolution away like a monster in a box.'

"Those 10 years have informed every year since. That is the main message of this exhibition."

Mao is very much alive, in terms of iconography at least. "People in southern China are now worshipping Mao in peasant temples along with their other folk gods," she says. "The reason Mao hasn't gone away is that no one has dealt with Maoist history. It has just been shoved aside."

In 2008, for example, Hemelryk Donald was a guest speaker at a peace exhibition in Beijing planned to coincide with the Olympic Games. Older artists from the Cultural Revolution period were encouraged to show their sketches, paintings and sculptures of Mao for the first time in years.

"The exhibition was closed down by the police after two days because it was just too embarrassing for the authorities," says Hemelryk Donald. "That worries artists. They say, 'Our young people have no memory – just the arrogance of youth.' "

China and Revolution: History, Parody and Memory in Contemporary Art is at University Art Gallery at the University of Sydney until November

sydney morning herald 16 september 2010