Remembering my Grandfather / Acts of Remembrance
2019
shirt, twig boat, water, plastic box, texts
Exhibited in Laugardalur Swimming Pool Reykjavik, February 2019, as a part of the group show: Remember
Recording events, movements, relationships, memories… How can one do this? How can memories be embodied in a new body (in a new material)? I lost my grandfather – one of my closest friends in life – two years ago. I documented the last year we had together through writing a journal. The journal got stolen on a travel to Spain half a year after my grandfather died. Somehow it felt like I lost him all over again. Like I also lost the last year I had with him. Even if that is not true. How valuable the representations of a person become. As if they contain parts of the person himself.
And I lost that.
The performance of remembering
A twig boat. With every gesture of the process of making my own boat, I will remember my grandfather.
I will imprint the gestures, the acts into my body memory. A physical way of remembering. An act of remembrance.
Remembrance
1: the state of bearing in mind
2a: the ability to remember: MEMORY
b: the period over which one’s memory extends
3: an act of recalling to mind
4: a memory of a person, thing, or event
5a: something that serves to keep in or bring to mind: REMINDER
b: COMMEMORATION, MEMORIAL
c: a greeting or gift recalling or expressing friendship or affection
MEMORY, REMEMBRANCE, RECOLLECTION, REMINISCENCE mean the capacity for or the act of remembering,
or the thing remembered.
REMEMBRANCE applies to the act of remembering or the fact of being remembered.
