Asobiba Reactivated Memories
Asobiba Reactivated Memories, 2018
Vue de l'exposition Kodomo No Kuni, Mémoire et enfance au Japon, la maréchalerie - centre d'art conteporain / ENSA Versailles. Photo Nicolas Brasseur
Collection FRAC Grand Large
Asobiba Reactivated Memories is an installation of ceramic sculptures
presented in an architectural metal structure. The shapes of these sculptures
are elements of play grounds that I played on during my childhood. These are
reproduced according to my memory (without looking at images, photos, or
drawings). The only plan I can use is my memory. This work focuses on visual
memory. I am interested here in the functioning of the brain when it appeals
to memory. We all always feel like we remember something very well. But this
is in my opinion false because there is a lot of loss in our memory and our
brain reconstructs another image. I often wonder what forms remain in our
memories. In this context, the architectural forms of the playgrounds will be
replaced by that of sculpture. A layer of abstraction will thus be added by the
deformation of my memory, materializing the distance we maintain from
our childhood. An article published by a scientist in the field of neuroscience
indicates that memory reproduces an image using information recorded in
the brain, every time we think or try to remember a shape, then that shape is
deconstructed. This repeated process for the creation of a visual memory led
me to this choice of “ceramic” materials. A modeling with clay would be close
to this process and the emergence of an image in memory. In addition, this
process echoes the subject of the exhibition.
The ceramic elements, about twenty in all, are placed on an
architectural structure. The latter will be both a sculpture and a base. Its
shape would evoke a scale 1 play ground : it will take the shape of a Jungle
Gym (also called a squirrel cage), such as there are still many in Japan,
but none in Europe due to the standards of separate security. The visitor
is invited to browse this architectural plinth to see the ceramic sculptures.
It is a question of materializing the work of memory, thus a labyrinth that
the visitor is invited to cross, and which shows the very mechanism of
memory, which stores, deconstructs and reorganizes what experience has
given him to see. It's about seeing what you don't see, applied to an object
from my childhood. It would then be a question of offering a specific
experience to spectators.