Short-Term Memory
Date：2015-12-04 ~ 2016-01-03
Venue: Taipei Artist Village, Barry Room
Memory is similar to photography. It captures fragments of reality to reconstruct the time and experiences, and is an effective means to gain control of the past. Long-term memory isownership of widely shared experience that even manipulates the will and judgment of the future. Nerveless, short-term memory is not simply ephemeral and transientremains. It includes all the forgotten and inaccessible consciousness and feelings, and makes more accurate perception possible to shape the present reality. This exhibition attempts to re-examine the meaning and reliability of memory whileinvestigating various aspects and possibilities of oblivion to represent the memory that once existed.
Living in the present age predicted by German philosopherin 1843, Ludwig Andreas Feuerbach, as one that “prefers the sign to the thing signified” the boundary between imagination and experience has gradually become blurry. One could never be certain whether our use of short-term memory is really justified and authentic, or ironically removes the reality to serve our imagination. In I have never written a poem, the artist reconstructs objects’essence and formally breaks appearances. By doing so, the work creates an unpredictable form to explore more possibilities of imagination (or to expose more of the reality). The outdated news headlines used in Financial Times Highlights Nov. 4 have all lost their original purposes and soon become some meaninglessly ornate words of economic liberalism as demands are determined by the duration and class of memory, and we are all discriminators against memory.
Tu-144 was the world’s first super-sonic airliner manufactured by Tupolev in the previous USSR during the Cold War. Its cooling system was abnormally loud that passengers had no choice but to communicate with written notes. The work, Tu-144, uses the image of this discontinued product and silently conveys the faded experience and message of the time. Purification is a project inspired by a legend. The ancestors of the Maori had sailed across the ocean to New Zealand from a distant island called Hawaiki, which could be Taiwan. Reflecting upon the thousand years before and after us, the infinite time and space renders us transient and invisible as our short-term memory, like some ambiguous existence excluded from memory.
Slowly disappearing from the urban landscape, Yu-Lan the Flower Seller might not have forgotten anything. The scent of the flowers simply evokes a disappeared scene in another city, allowing the past to be represented from a different perspective. Walter Benjamin once said, “The measure of meaning precisely equals the force of decay and death.” Kaensan Rattansomerk documented relatives’ chanting at the time when his grandfather passed away. Through memory, the deceased could reunite with the living; and until the deceased is to be forgotten by the world, he or she would die again.
Oblivion beckons at the absence of memory, and memory exists solely for oblivion.
Curator／HUANG Hsiang、Eva LIN
Artists／Julien COIGNET、Humberto DUQUE、Kaensan RATTANASOMERK、Kaya HANASAKI、Yotaro NIWA、CHEN Yun-Ju
暫存記憶
日期：2015-12-04 ~ 2016-01-03
地點：台北國際藝術村，百里廳
記憶如同攝影般，藉由捕捉片段的真實，用以拼湊時間與經驗，獲取控制過去的一種有效手段。長期記憶是一種獲廣泛共識的擁有，更操控未來的意志與判奪。然暫存記憶，不只是消縱即逝的殘留樣貌，包含一切的遺忘以及無法存取的意識與感受，卻能提出更精確感知診斷，形塑當下存在的現實。此展想要探討的不僅重新檢視記憶之意義與可靠性，更是將遺忘涉及之種種面向與可能性，紀念暫存的逝去記憶。
處在德國哲學家路德維希・安德列斯・費爾巴哈（Ludwig Andreas Feuerbach）1843所預言的「重影像而輕實在…」的時代，想像和經驗的界線逐漸模糊，而暫存記憶是否經過正義精確的標準來存取，抑或扼殺了現實，用以滿足想像。〈我從未寫過詩〉（I have never written a poem）中藉由重塑物件的本質性，從形式上打破原有表象，創造無法預期的形式，開拓更多的想像，揭露更多的現實。《2015年11月4日金融時報焦點新聞》（Financial Times Highlights Nov. 4）所描繪的過期新聞標題，如今看來已失去原有的意義，瞬息成為經濟自由主義下華麗虛飾的詞藻，需求取決記憶之持久性與階級性，而我們都成了記憶歧視者。
冷戰時期由前蘇聯圖波列夫公司製造世界第一款超音速客機（Tu-144）冷卻系統異常吵雜，乘客只能使用紙條溝通，藉由已經停產的時代產物意象，以無聲來傳遞時代的消逝的經驗與訊息。一個以傳說為起點的計畫〈淨化〉（Purification），毛利人的祖先從遙遠的哈瓦基島嶼，可能就是台灣，飄洋過海到紐西蘭。沈思於過去千年前或是未來千年後，時空的無限性使我們如同暫存記憶般消逝無蹤，記憶之外那隱晦的存在。
逐漸成為城市中逝去的風景〈賣玉蘭花〉（Yu-Lan the Flower Seller），或許不曾遺忘了什麼，卻因花氣在異地喚醒過往的景色，過去因而得以以不同的角度重新被陳述。正如班雅明所暗示的：「意義的份量恰好等於衰 朽和死亡的力量。」肯桑・羅特納索瑞克（Kaensan Rattanasomrerk）紀錄其外祖父去世時被親人恭誦之際，藉由記憶，已故者與在世者得已重聚，直當被世人所遺忘，已故者將再次死亡。
遺忘是沒了記憶，記憶是為了遺忘。
策展人／黃翔、林怡華
藝術家／朱利安・夸涅、安伯托・杜克、肯桑・羅特納索瑞克、花崎草、丹羽陽太郎、陳韻如
Yun-Ju Chen 