Installation, 2014.
Memory Transition is an installation based on drawings, photographs and a slide projection. It brings together different themes, blending memory and photography, historical events of German history (the Second World War, the division of East and West Germany afterwards), and the techniques of framing a person during the start of portrait photography.
Walking trough the room-sized installation, the perception of the images change. When the slide projection is blocked (by another visitor for example) two pale photographs of historical artifacts emerge. You vaguely see the traces of an eraser used to erase parts of the image. One photo shows a part of the wall that separated East- and West-Germany, the other shows a photo of a bunker that was part of the Atlantic Wall. Both photos were taken several years ago during research travel. One journey along the former inner-German border, the other one along the Atlantic Wall in France.
The slide that projected upon the two photos is a recurring theme in my work (see also: Family Matters, Stille Post). The portrait has a symbolic function. A symbol of the difference in perception of history.
Culture shapes us as individuals but also shapes the way we perceive events. In this installation the individual memory is placed alongside the collective memory. What the individual remembers can be very different from what the state, culture or a social group of people perceive as memory. And so the installation becomes a transition of the memories.
