Written by Tzeni Argyriou

“Memorandum” is a hybrid performance/installation based on the concepts of history, memory and image that evokes a journey of remembering in a landscape made of fragmented images, shadows and sounds. The use of space and materials creates an autonomous installation, a scaffold of an inactive mechanism that becomes active and interacts audio visually with the the viewers and the performers. And so memorandum functions as a mechanism of reminder for all these ‘recent’ memories that we shouldn’t forget. “Elements from different eras have been used to make us travel in time in order to enlighten us for the past and make us think for the present.

Holding a photograph of something or someone ‘that has been’ (Roland Barthes, Camera Lucida: Reflections on photography, 1981), something like a fragment or a shadow, is like going against forgetting which seems to be our common destiny.

This project consists from archival research, workshops, artists in residencies and aim to create various artistic expressions such as performances, installations and web archive platforms. The working practice for the creation of Memorandum included laboratories, interviews and other activities which are open to the public and often are taking place in public spaces. Specifically, during Memorandum Research period (2012-2014) five laboratories took place in Athens, Kavala, Naxos, Dusseldorf and Marseille in which we were collecting the historical memories of each city in order to create a bigger geographical library of memories and to use these materials in a in situ public interaction, creating an on going dialogue. During Memorandum Labs the space is transformed into a living, experimental and working environment: a space of ideas – stimuli for the creative team, a space of audiovisual tests / experiments / constructions (small or big scale), a space of audience participation and contribution. People from the local community were invited to participate sharing their photos, testimonies and stories as well as participating in the performative presentation at the end of the research laboratories. Memorandum was produced by amorphy.org, coproduced by Théâtre des Bernardines, O Espaço do Tempo, Tanzhaus nrw και Marseille-Provence 2013, Capitale européenne de la culture and supported by Festival Fillipon, Institut français and Conseil Régional PACA και EHESS Paris (Labex).