The year 2012 started off very well. Successfully I finished my Master thesis at the Sandberg Institute and I completed my study with an interesting exhibition at the SMBA in Amsterdam.

At the moment I am enjoying a research scholarship and work on a project in Berlin.
I am researching the culture of remembrance in archives. I focus on two different kind of archives. One archive is preserving historical documents and the other – the Stasi archive – provides individuals with these documents to reprocess their personal pasts. The result will be a paper on that subject.

I am furthermore preparing a lecture to invite other bright minds to speak about these issues. I am planing on presenting the activity in Amsterdam and Berlin. For more detailed information I will keep you updated.

I wish you a good start for 2013 and all the best!

Sincerely

Ina Marie Schmidt

A short response on my latest news:

Thank you all for your helpful replies to my graduation thesis! From
there, a lot of interesting conversations on family photos emerged. I received
interesting correspondence from people abroad, telling me about their
perception of family photos, which is often quite different from mine. This way I
learned that in Asia the experience of this subject varies widely, and
that it’s often very different from the European viewpoint.

Projects

A fellow artist, Pierfabrizio Paradiso, has written a thesis as well. In
his thesis project, he has selected a video from my work “Family
Matters”. This video will be screened at the NABA – Nuova Accademia di Belle Arti in Milan on the 3rd of July, at 15:00 hours.
Pierfabrizio approached several artists, and raised questions about everyday
experience. The presentation will be kept at the NABA, Via C. Darwin 21,
Milano, Italy. If you are near Milan, make sure to visit his presentation.

Master Graduation

The graduation show will take place from July 11-15. It’s titled
“Festival of Choices”, and in this event different institutes from Amsterdam
will each present one graduating artist. I’m very happy to announce my
work was selected by the curators of the SMBA – Stedelijk Museum Bureau
Amsterdam.

The exhibition opens on the 11th of July at 16:00 hours.

Please keep July 11th free in your calendars, and make sure to visit the
opening!

Kind regards,

Ina Marie Schmidt

The past two months I’ve been hiding behind books and my computer. I’ve been writing my thesis for the Master program at the Sandberg Institute. And it’s finally finished, so here I proudly present the result “Memory Generation – On The Apparatus Of Remembering”. In this thesis I use family photos to show the difficulty in ‘reading’ images. The context of a family photo is deeply connected to our memory. As we all know, what we remember is often very different from what actually happened. Even though we know this, we still treasure our family photos; Their value is in their proof of who we are.

If you’re interested, you can download my thesis at: http://www.inamarieschmidt.com/?writing=thesis-memory-generation-on-the-apparatus-of-remembering
Please let me know what you think. It would be really nice to get your feedback!

In other news
In the upcoming months I will focus on the graduation show. I will lock myself up in the studio to make some new works. Let me know if you want to visit me in the studio, I am glad to have some critical visitors!
The graduation show will take place July 11 to 15. Location is not confirmed yet, but it will take place in Amsterdam. More information will follow. Hopefully I will see you there!

All the best,

Ina Marie Schmidt

Its been a busy couple of months, so first off I’d like to apologize for the long time you haven’t heard from me. I’ve been attending lectures, visiting exhibitions, reading books, doing research for my thesis, you name it. (Yes, I’m still a student at the Sandberg Institute.)

I went to Brussels (Belgium) last weekend and at Tulips & Roses we joined a group discussion led by Pierre Bismuth. There were some very interesting stories in the discussion about hypnosis and about Bismuth’s current exhibition in Amsterdam at the Smart Project Space. We also visited Maastricht (Netherlands) and went to the Marres to visit an exhibition about the 1990′s, called Avant-Garde: Specters of the Nineties which was curated by one of the tutors of my academy; Lisette Smit. Great stuff, check it out if you’ve got the chance!

As I mentioned, the past month I’ve been focused mainly on my thesis. It deals with the familiar question of the value of private photographs as evidence. For this research I’ve read books and attended lectures. I even went to visit a shop that sells complete family albums from various families. A great source of inspiration. In writing, some of the interesting stuff I came across were classics such as Susan Sontag’s On Photographhy and Regarding the Pain of Others, and Roland Barthes’ Camera Lucida. New ones that stood out were Marianne Hirsch’ essay The Generation of Post-Memory, and Annette Kuhn’s essay Remembrance: The Child I Never Was and John Tagg’s Evidence Truth and Order. Good stuff!

In February I will start working on my end presentation for the Sandberg finals. It will culminate into an exhibition, a book or into fireworks —or all of it at once!

I wish you a nice and hungry christmas holidays!

Ina Marie Schmidt

I participated in different workshops in the last months, visited different artists in their studio, listened to interesting lectures and saw some amazing exhibitions. After so much inspiration I will focus on producing new works in the summer months.

The second publication will be my main focus. The publication will contain the Self-Interviews I started writing in 2008 until now. The interviews are fictive talks I was holding with myself, stepping into two identities – the artist and the observer!

Kind regards,

Ina Marie Schmidt

We’ve created a new structure, which will guide you through all the news, projects and exhibitions. You are also welcome to browse the archive.

The website was made together with Mark Lindhout, who did the design and coding.

Feel free to take a look around. Let me know what you think!