Artes Memorativae
Artist's Book
Artist's Book
CONCEPT
Create an artist’s book that will serve as an abstract meditation on various material practices—both historical and contemporary—which enact and embody “memory.” Put otherwise, the subject of the book is cultural practices which are intimately bound up with varying ways of “remembering”. The book will strive to unite subject and object; each page will be composed of material which literally embodies the subject matter of that page.
CREATIVE SOLUTION
Artes Memorativae took the form of eight wax tablets yoked together on a ring. Overall, the book can be understood as the material instantiation of three conceptual influences. The first is Frances Yate’s historical research into the “Art of Memory”, a practice whereby Roman orators constructed mental architectural spaces filled with various emblems. In order to recall the sequence and content of their speeches, they “walked” these mental spaces and took note of the various symbolic objects. The second influence is the Roman wax tablet, an ancient form of the book. The final influence is Freud’s essay “A Note Upon the Mystic Writing-Pad”, in which he likens unconscious memory impressions to grooves in a wax tablet. Taken together, these threads combine to create a book that is a self-reflexive meditation on memory, wherein each page represents a semantic “architectural space”, embedded in which are various emblems that evoke specific material practices related to memory. The eight pages of the book pertain to the following subjects:
• Roman Theater of Memory
• Mourning
• Renaissance System of Hermetic Correspondences, specifically Giordano Bruno
• Time
• Reminders
• Concupiscence
• Mortality
• Information Indexing & Embodied Cognition
• Mourning
• Renaissance System of Hermetic Correspondences, specifically Giordano Bruno
• Time
• Reminders
• Concupiscence
• Mortality
• Information Indexing & Embodied Cognition
Finally, the beeswax used as the primary material possesses a strong scent, and thereby activates the sense of smell, which is itself associated with memory.
