Memory/oversaturated

Memory/oversaturated is based on the study of screenshots of smartphone feeds provided by more than 40 people. Diving closer into the uncombed digital archive of everyday life allows us to witness the contemporary landscape of collective memory.

The Memory/oversaturated is based on the study of screenshots of smartphone feeds provided by more than 40 people. The author invites us to witness the contemporary landscape of collective memory by diving closer into the uncombed digital archive that each of us replenish every day.

In the current digital era smartphones have become an extension of a human hand, creating a situation of expanding mind and memory into digital spaces. The practice of everyday documentation has a power of justification: if you took a photo, you considered the moment to be worth keeping in memory. The practice transforms our habits, dictates the visuality and reconstructs people’s existing memories. 

The FRAGILE series contains screenshots where some of the data was lost. Fragments of arrays are dissected simultaneously by accidental technological failure and cropping of the artist. Echoing the constructive and fragmentary nature of memory, the slices expose its instability and fragility, as well as raise the question of personal space: the possibility of digital memory to be damaged, viewed and stolen by other people. Isolating screenshots from the usual field and changing the scale recode the perception mode, creating a peering situation.

The work exposed also in the form an art-object – an archive folder with several dummy books, a printed art-work the size of 30x42 cm and a magnifier. The «Registration» dummy book, each received “slice of memory” is registered (including the data about the owner that helps to decode the patterns; or such parameters as missing data/request to blur the private data that leave more space for interpretation). Concertino book "Fragility" addresses the fragility of digital memory, the possibility to lose it. А magnifier poses an ethical question to the audience by revealing the possibility for digital memory of being stolen and viewed by other people. The “Fragments[28]” dummy book includes close-ups from slices of memory (28 images each) and refers to the unity and diversity of the collective photogenic images.