2019
Ramus
"Not far from our summer house, right in the middle of the forest, we found a dump where everything that once filled the man's home was thrown: windows, doors, plumbing, cupboards with books and records, a bed, clothes, dishes — a whole life. It turned out that these things belonged to a woman, her name was Elena Eduardovna Ramus. Judging by the fragmentaries of the surviving documents, she was born on August 16, 1939. She had been working at a some scientific research institute, traveling a lot after the retirement. It seems she did not have children — she was pictured alone on almost all of the photographs.
Among the books we found a lot of slides and films. Through dampness and mold, the emulsion on some slides were damaged. There were traveling photos, nature photography, images of a typical Soviet landscapes, and pictures of Elena Eduardovna herself. There was an impression that the images would disappear soon, as well as many books, postcards, films, photographs and other things. A month later, the dump vanished as suddenly as it had appeared — it was cleared out and the place was covered with ground, so there was not a single thing left".
Ramus project is compiled from fragmentary evidences of a person's life — implicit, deteriorating and collapsing imprints of time, blown away by the "storm" of history. The footage which is being presented at the exhibition is a piece of film where Elena's name is written by bacterias and molds taken from the found archive. The material basis of this memory is a photo-emulsion influenced by the natural environment. It refers to an a priori weakness of the materiality regarding the historical perspective. Through an artistic gesture it revives in the unity of the "organic" and the "cultural", blurring the boundary between these two eternal opposites. Therefore, this weakness does not only preserve, but also fulfills its hidden potential — both the demand to remember, and the necessity of being forgotten.
Evgeniy Molodtsov, Daria Molodtsova
Among the books we found a lot of slides and films. Through dampness and mold, the emulsion on some slides were damaged. There were traveling photos, nature photography, images of a typical Soviet landscapes, and pictures of Elena Eduardovna herself. There was an impression that the images would disappear soon, as well as many books, postcards, films, photographs and other things. A month later, the dump vanished as suddenly as it had appeared — it was cleared out and the place was covered with ground, so there was not a single thing left".
Ramus project is compiled from fragmentary evidences of a person's life — implicit, deteriorating and collapsing imprints of time, blown away by the "storm" of history. The footage which is being presented at the exhibition is a piece of film where Elena's name is written by bacterias and molds taken from the found archive. The material basis of this memory is a photo-emulsion influenced by the natural environment. It refers to an a priori weakness of the materiality regarding the historical perspective. Through an artistic gesture it revives in the unity of the "organic" and the "cultural", blurring the boundary between these two eternal opposites. Therefore, this weakness does not only preserve, but also fulfills its hidden potential — both the demand to remember, and the necessity of being forgotten.
Evgeniy Molodtsov, Daria Molodtsova
"Impulse" exhibition. Sergey Kuryokhin Contemporary Art Center. Saint-Petersburg. October 2019.