Mnemotecnia
Rundgang Exhibition at Akademie der Bildenden Kunste Wien, Vienna AUS.
2024
Presented during Rundgang 2024 Akademie der Bildenden Kunste Wien, Mnemotecnia consists of two pieces made with dust collected in the spaces of the exhibition, recreating the very same space where the dust comes from. Over the course of several weeks, I swept the floors of the spaces from Kurzbauergasse 9 and 8er Raum - the sculpture department of the academy - collecting all the dust, debris and residues from the spaces with the intention of somehow making a postcard or a portrait of the spaces and time I inhabited during my time in Vienna.
Far from intending to represent the present space or creating something out of nowhere, the drawing aims to re-configure the space by re-locating the very same residues of such space. What happens when you start working with something as oblivious and omnipresent as dust, it suddenly becomes an inexhaustible resource. In many ways, the dust collected is the memory of the space; the residues of everyday life. By re-arranging it in the format of an architectural layout drawing, the gesture addresses the agency that something so banal, fragile, and subtle as dust can have and as something with the same material potential that oil paint or clay has.
These versions were made over an adhesive surface, mimicking the size and format of architecture blueprints. This way, throughout the time of the exhibition, more dust stuck to the work, making it an alive archive of the time and space of such event. The work was also a comment towards the institution: showing the institution’s filth in the most literal sense.
The title Mnemotechny alludes to the process of memorizing and remembering through the connection of associations that can take you from one idea to another. In that sense, anything - even dust - can be a mnemotechnique.
