What Do We Remember With?

What Do We Remember With?

This question, of course, has many possible answers. If, in human beings, memory operates on a neural level, then with what does humanity remember? Where do social and cultural memories come from? How do the past and the present coexist within a single community, within many communities, within society as a whole?

The second exhibition in the project “Parallax Action. Where Do We Come From? Who Are We? Where Are We Going? And Why We Won’t Return There Again”, organized by the Institute of Contemporary Art – Sofia, presents works by five artists chosen by drawing lots from within the members of this small community. As it happens, this stage of the annual project features only male artists—a circumstance that complicates the conversation about social and cultural memory, since it inevitably implies a gender limitation.

For this reason, it is especially important to note that the exhibition is structured around research on memory formulated by women—literary scholars Aleida Assmann, Ann Rigney, and Astrid Erll¹. Once the curator found the necessary inner balance, the exhibition took shape around their concept of cultural memory, a type of memory that recognizes everyone’s right to have their own impressions of the past. Here, the past is not presented as a collection of competing narratives, but as a visualization of fragments.

Cultural memory, unlimited by time or by objects of remembrance, resists official narratives. It is transmitted freely through signs and symbols that carry potential for interpretation and association.

The exhibition offers markers of personal interactions with the past as they appear in the present. It reflects the unsystematic network of the “important” and the “unimportant” that each of us weaves individually. The participating artists are well-known and immediately recognizable; their individual stories, messages, and commentaries transform memory into artistic form, expand the field of cultural memory, and help stabilize society’s self-awareness within our inexhaustible and intricately entangled socio-cultural context.

Iara Bubnova

"What Do We Remember With?" is the second exhibition from the project "Parallax Action. Where Do We Come From? Who Are We? Where Are We Going? And Why Won't We Return to Where We Came From?" in the context of the 30th anniversary of the Institute for Contemporary Art - Sofia (ICA-Sofia). 

The events are funded by the National Fund “Culture” / Creation Program 2024.

¹ Aleida Assmann, “The Past in the Present: Dimensions and Dynamics of Cultural Memory,” 2018; Ann Rigney, “Imperfect Histories: The Elusive Past and the Legacy of Romantic Historicism,” 2001; Astrid Erll, “Cultural Memory after the Transitional Turn,” 2018.