Memory Erosion 2007
Memory Erosion 1. Gelatine Silver Print, 20х25cm. Limited edition 10+2AP
Memory Erosion
Interview with Andrew Polushkin by Alexander Shmakov.
Translated by Tatyana Kumenko.
- So tell us, how did you get the idea of Memory Erosion series? What was the precondition?
- As for me, the art has never been neither a subject of entertainment, nor source of money, nor way to spend some time. The art for me is a way of realization of myself, different emotional conditions, sometimes even a kind of psychological therapy. Visualization gives me some removal, some distance from myself and in this state of mind I am able to talk to myself about everything. Everything that troubles, interests, involves. In 2007 my father died. Emotional problems of personal loss became a spur to one-time conception for two different series: Memory Erosion and Reconstruction of Memory.
- You use absolutely different approaches in these two series. Memory Erosion is a straight documentary photography, and Reconstruction of Memory consists of complex multi-layered collages printed in old forgotten hand printing technique. Did you intentionally create such a distance between them?
- These two series have one impulse, but they are totally different. Degree of author’s interference into the original image depends on the source material. Memory Erosion series has no manipulation with the original image. This is what we really have at our cemeteries. It is said, that the attitude to the deceased is a reflection of the people’s attitude towards their history. And those portraits with obvious traces of erosion perfectly demonstrate our common subconscious wish to forget our questionable and sometimes terrifying history. But this is just one of themes in this series. It’s like a bass part in the whole tune.
Interview with Andrew Polushkin by Alexander Shmakov.
Translated by Tatyana Kumenko.
- So tell us, how did you get the idea of Memory Erosion series? What was the precondition?
- As for me, the art has never been neither a subject of entertainment, nor source of money, nor way to spend some time. The art for me is a way of realization of myself, different emotional conditions, sometimes even a kind of psychological therapy. Visualization gives me some removal, some distance from myself and in this state of mind I am able to talk to myself about everything. Everything that troubles, interests, involves. In 2007 my father died. Emotional problems of personal loss became a spur to one-time conception for two different series: Memory Erosion and Reconstruction of Memory.
- You use absolutely different approaches in these two series. Memory Erosion is a straight documentary photography, and Reconstruction of Memory consists of complex multi-layered collages printed in old forgotten hand printing technique. Did you intentionally create such a distance between them?
- These two series have one impulse, but they are totally different. Degree of author’s interference into the original image depends on the source material. Memory Erosion series has no manipulation with the original image. This is what we really have at our cemeteries. It is said, that the attitude to the deceased is a reflection of the people’s attitude towards their history. And those portraits with obvious traces of erosion perfectly demonstrate our common subconscious wish to forget our questionable and sometimes terrifying history. But this is just one of themes in this series. It’s like a bass part in the whole tune.
Memory Erosion 2. Gelatine Silver Print, 20х25cm. Limited edition 10+2AP
- Then tell us more about this tune, because a viewer feels shoked at first time, when he meets the eyes of a person who doesn’t exist any more, but his or her image goes on to ruin. Some of those portraits have a blaming look, and they make strong and uncompromising influence as a placard. Behind this imputation a viewer finds himself at the threshold of shock, which is not easy to overcome.
- Slight shocking effect is very helpful for punching a hole in the armour of daily routine. Shock implants an image in viewer’s memory and allows to go back to it later for interpretation. But for me the main subject is not shock or conscience. The main subject of this series is life of a photographic image as a symbol of human life, with maturing, ageing and final dissolution of first - physical body, and then - even memory about it. Usually when somebody dies, his or her relatives choose from heaps of pictures only one photo, which will be printed on enamel and remind them of this person, when they come to the cemetery. It works like a crutch for our limping memory. This is an extract of photography. But at the same time it’s also an extract of notions about that definite person. This one characteristic image averages all the memories about the departed. Sometimes it’s a studio portrait, sometimes a passport photo, or enlarged face from a group picture. This is how the final image of a definite man comes to life after him. Generations of cemetery visitors change, year after year less people come to his grave. Some of relatives die, move to another country or just loose the emotional bond to the depicted person. In spite of this, his image goes on living, it ages, fails to withstand the elements of nature and acts of vandalism, getting damaged and ruined.
- Slight shocking effect is very helpful for punching a hole in the armour of daily routine. Shock implants an image in viewer’s memory and allows to go back to it later for interpretation. But for me the main subject is not shock or conscience. The main subject of this series is life of a photographic image as a symbol of human life, with maturing, ageing and final dissolution of first - physical body, and then - even memory about it. Usually when somebody dies, his or her relatives choose from heaps of pictures only one photo, which will be printed on enamel and remind them of this person, when they come to the cemetery. It works like a crutch for our limping memory. This is an extract of photography. But at the same time it’s also an extract of notions about that definite person. This one characteristic image averages all the memories about the departed. Sometimes it’s a studio portrait, sometimes a passport photo, or enlarged face from a group picture. This is how the final image of a definite man comes to life after him. Generations of cemetery visitors change, year after year less people come to his grave. Some of relatives die, move to another country or just loose the emotional bond to the depicted person. In spite of this, his image goes on living, it ages, fails to withstand the elements of nature and acts of vandalism, getting damaged and ruined.
Memory Erosion 3. Gelatine Silver Print, 20х25cm. Limited edition 10+2AP
- So, you want to say, that not all of these erosed portraits are damaged by people’s hands?
- No. With the time enamel becomes friable. Every notch becomes rusty, and this makes erosion go faster. The surface of enamel can be damaged by a falling branch, heavy rains or hailstones. But human factor also occurs, such as vandalism of marginals, that happens at our cemeteries.
- There are no names and dates in your artworks. Why?
- I deliberately chose those portraits, which didn’t include names and dates on them, or where letters were destroyed by natural way. I didn’t want to narrow the meanings. For example, if under the portrait we see figures of death 1938 – one of the years of political terror in my country, and the portrait has got notches all over, like of bullets, it gives the only narrow way of understanding of such a picture. I intentionally didn’t want to touch the political history layer. I’m interested in deeper philosophical reading of this subject – an image of our memory, that is getting thinner and thinner until total annihilation and transition into an abstract picture of blurs.
- No. With the time enamel becomes friable. Every notch becomes rusty, and this makes erosion go faster. The surface of enamel can be damaged by a falling branch, heavy rains or hailstones. But human factor also occurs, such as vandalism of marginals, that happens at our cemeteries.
- There are no names and dates in your artworks. Why?
- I deliberately chose those portraits, which didn’t include names and dates on them, or where letters were destroyed by natural way. I didn’t want to narrow the meanings. For example, if under the portrait we see figures of death 1938 – one of the years of political terror in my country, and the portrait has got notches all over, like of bullets, it gives the only narrow way of understanding of such a picture. I intentionally didn’t want to touch the political history layer. I’m interested in deeper philosophical reading of this subject – an image of our memory, that is getting thinner and thinner until total annihilation and transition into an abstract picture of blurs.
Memory Erosion 4. Gelatine Silver Print, 20х25cm. Limited edition 10+2AP
- And in Reconstruction of Memory you tried to restore what was lost? How gently did you reconstructed the memory, or it was just imaginary restoration, like how it could possibly be?
- In Reconstruction of Memory I didn’t set for myself the problem to illustrate real documentary history. I was working with sense codes. These sense codes are associative language of images, which it used by our mind for recording and storing of the information. This is the language that our subconscious uses to talk to our conscious when we are sleeping. Reconstruction of Memory series combine many components. I was ballancing between logic intelligent construction and intuitial impulses, which I cannot explain. Maybe full understanding will come later. For example, I’ve made an artwork with a boy in shabby winter clothes, old lopsided hut behind, black window, splash of pigeons’ wings over boy’s head, turning into light, into smoke, into nothing. The basement for this picture was my father’s story about the first winter during the Siege of Leningrad (1). My father and his friends were little boys and they had a pigeonry in local yard. One winter morning the boys went out and saw, that all the pigeons were gone. Last night somebody killed them all and took for eating. At first my father grieved about murdered beauty, but later, in starvation faint and deadly cold he envied that man who ate those birds. And in the picture based on this story I started to mount clockwork. I cannot explain this, all I was listening to was intuition. And I turned off the logic and went on to work. In about a month, when the artwork was printed and was hanging on a wall, I suddenly remembered a documentary TV program, which I had seen years before. They interviewed old people who survived durind the Siege of Leningrad, and one of them told that the Siege was strongly bound in his mind with loud ticking of a metal clock, which was standing near his small bed and imperturbably counted excruciating seconds of starvation.
- In Reconstruction of Memory I didn’t set for myself the problem to illustrate real documentary history. I was working with sense codes. These sense codes are associative language of images, which it used by our mind for recording and storing of the information. This is the language that our subconscious uses to talk to our conscious when we are sleeping. Reconstruction of Memory series combine many components. I was ballancing between logic intelligent construction and intuitial impulses, which I cannot explain. Maybe full understanding will come later. For example, I’ve made an artwork with a boy in shabby winter clothes, old lopsided hut behind, black window, splash of pigeons’ wings over boy’s head, turning into light, into smoke, into nothing. The basement for this picture was my father’s story about the first winter during the Siege of Leningrad (1). My father and his friends were little boys and they had a pigeonry in local yard. One winter morning the boys went out and saw, that all the pigeons were gone. Last night somebody killed them all and took for eating. At first my father grieved about murdered beauty, but later, in starvation faint and deadly cold he envied that man who ate those birds. And in the picture based on this story I started to mount clockwork. I cannot explain this, all I was listening to was intuition. And I turned off the logic and went on to work. In about a month, when the artwork was printed and was hanging on a wall, I suddenly remembered a documentary TV program, which I had seen years before. They interviewed old people who survived durind the Siege of Leningrad, and one of them told that the Siege was strongly bound in his mind with loud ticking of a metal clock, which was standing near his small bed and imperturbably counted excruciating seconds of starvation.
Memory Erosion 5. Gelatine Silver Print, 20х25cm. Limited edition 10+2AP
I guess this story settled somewhere in my memory and interlaced with the other stories about the Siege. Every artwork from “Reconstruction of Memory” is a mixture of such pieces of somewhere heard, somewhat seen, read, felt and experienced. This language is very capable, yet it doesn’t restrict any viewer to the only one interpretation. Every picture can be felt by anyone as a sum of impulses or it can be read as a garden of diverging versions. It depends on viewer’s disposition.
(1) The Siege of Leningrad by Nazi Germany During World War II. The Siege lasted 872 days from September 1941 to January 1944. According to different sources, during the Siege from 300 thousands to 1,5 million people died. Only 3% died from bombing and artillery bombardment, the rest died from starvation.
(1) The Siege of Leningrad by Nazi Germany During World War II. The Siege lasted 872 days from September 1941 to January 1944. According to different sources, during the Siege from 300 thousands to 1,5 million people died. Only 3% died from bombing and artillery bombardment, the rest died from starvation.
Memory Erosion 6. Gelatine Silver Print, 20х25cm. Limited edition 10+2AP
Memory Erosion 7. Gelatine Silver Print, 20х25cm. Limited edition 10+2AP
Memory Erosion 8. Gelatine Silver Print, 20х25cm. Limited edition 10+2AP
Memory Erosion 9. Gelatine Silver Print, 20х25cm. Limited edition 10+2AP
Memory Erosion 10. Gelatine Silver Print, 20х25cm. Limited edition 10+2AP
Memory Erosion 11. Gelatine Silver Print, 20х25cm. Limited edition 10+2AP
Memory Erosion 12. Gelatine Silver Print, 20х25cm. Limited edition 10+2AP
Memory Erosion 13. Gelatine Silver Print, 20х20cm. Limited edition 10+2AP
Memory Erosion 14.Gelatine Silver Print, 20х20cm. Limited edition 10+2AP
Memory Erosion 15. Gelatine Silver Print, 20х20cm. Limited edition 10+2AP
Memory Erosion 16. Gelatine Silver Print, 20х20cm. Limited edition 10+2AP
Memory Erosion 17. Gelatine Silver Print, 20х20cm. Limited edition 10+2AP
Memory Erosion 18. Gelatine Silver Print, 20х20cm. Limited edition 10+2AP
Memory Erosion 19. Gelatine Silver Print, 20х20cm. Limited edition 10+2AP
Memory Erosion 20. Gelatine Silver Print, 20х20cm. Limited edition 10+2AP
Memory Erosion 21. Gelatine Silver Print, 20х20cm. Limited edition 10+2AP
Memory Erosion 22. Gelatine Silver Print, 20х20cm. Limited edition 10+2AP
Memory Erosion 23. Gelatine Silver Print, 20х20cm. Limited edition 10+2AP
Memory Erosion 24. Gelatine Silver Print, 20х20cm. Limited edition 10+2AP
Memory Erosion 25. Gelatine Silver Print, 20х20cm. Limited edition 10+2AP
Memory Erosion 26. Gelatine Silver Print, 20х20cm. Limited edition 10+2AP
Memory Erosion 27. Gelatine Silver Print, 20х20cm. Limited edition 10+2AP
Memory Erosion 28. Gelatine Silver Print, 20х20cm. Limited edition 10+2AP
Memory Erosion 29. Gelatine Silver Print, 20х20cm. Limited edition 10+2AP
Memory Erosion 30. Gelatine Silver Print, 20х20cm. Limited edition 10+2AP
Memory Erosion 31. Gelatine Silver Print, 20х20cm. Limited edition 10+2AP
Memory Erosion 32. Gelatine Silver Print, 20х20cm. Limited edition 10+2AP
Memory Erosion 33. Gelatine Silver Print, 20х20cm. Limited edition 10+2AP
Memory Erosion 34. Gelatine Silver Print, 20х20cm. Limited edition 10+2AP
Memory Erosion 35. Gelatine Silver Print, 20х20cm. Limited edition 10+2AP
Memory Erosion 36. Gelatine Silver Print, 20х20cm. Limited edition 10+2AP
Memory Erosion 37. Gelatine Silver Print, 20х20cm. Limited edition 10+2AP
Memory Erosion 38. Gelatine Silver Print, 20х20cm. Limited edition 10+2AP
Memory Erosion 39. Gelatine Silver Print, 20х20cm. Limited edition 10+2AP
Memory Erosion 40. Gelatine Silver Print, 20х20cm. Limited edition 10+2AP
Memory Erosion 41. Gelatine Silver Print, 20х20cm. Limited edition 10+2AP
Memory Erosion 42. Gelatine Silver Print, 20х20cm. Limited edition 10+2AP
Memory Erosion 43. Gelatine Silver Print, 20х20cm. Limited edition 10+2AP
Memory Erosion 44. Gelatine Silver Print, 20х20cm. Limited edition 10+2AP
Memory Erosion 45. Gelatine Silver Print, 20х20cm. Limited edition 10+2AP
Memory Erosion 46. Gelatine Silver Print, 20х20cm. Limited edition 10+2AP
Memory Erosion 47. Gelatine Silver Print, 20х20cm. Limited edition 10+2AP
Memory Erosion 48. Gelatine Silver Print, 20х20cm. Limited edition 10+2AP
Memory Erosion 49. Gelatine Silver Print, 20х20cm. Limited edition 10+2AP
Memory Erosion 50. Gelatine Silver Print, 20х20cm. Limited edition 10+2AP
Memory Erosion 51. Gelatine Silver Print, 20х20cm. Limited edition 10+2AP