Dear Archive,
I’m glad I was able to create you!
I think I’m proud of you. You’ve grown so fast. At first, you were just a few pictures, a couple of dates, a few insignificant moments. But now you’re filled with me.
More and more often, I’ve found myself missing the present. That’s why I created you—to save everything inside you: pictures, sentences, people. Not that they mean anything to me. Rather, so that later I’ll have something to refer to if anyone ever asks what I actually spent my life doing. Because life is full of moments that aren’t good enough for me to lose myself in, but are too important to just let go of. You see, that’s why I need you.
Since then, you’ve become completely independent, as if I weren’t even here anymore:
Preliminary registration of potential memories has begun.
Assigning retrospective significance is currently in progress.
Remembering outsourced, status: archived.
Sounds strange? It does to me, too.
But then why is it that I’m here in the present, and at the same time I’m already thinking about how nice it’ll be to look back on this? Why can I only appreciate what I’m experiencing right now when viewed from the future? Why don’t I feel anything right now?
I can’t know which moment will become important later on. Which one marked the beginning of something, or which one was the last of something. I can’t know that in advance. I’d rather have left so that I’d have something to miss later.
So, dear Archive, thank you for being there for me! Thank you for always reminding me of what’s missing. Take care of yourself, grow even bigger, and tell beautiful stories about me!
With love:
Marcell
Marcell Puskás’s exhibition and participatory performance explores the process of creating and preserving memories. The project explores the relationship between memory-making, documentation, and archiving, and investigates how we try to set aside objects, images, and moments for ourselves so that we can return to them later. The exhibition functions as a constantly evolving archive in which participants themselves contribute to the creation and organization of memories. Together, the participatory performance and the exhibition create an archive that not only preserves but also continuously recreates what we wish to remember later.
Eszter Rácz, curator of the exhibition