Memory is a place: an electric tangle in a physical space, the translation of raw material into raw material, the synesthetic layering of a Who, a What, and a Where, subject to indefinite and perishable indications of time. Every attempt to access a memory sets in motion sensory efforts, like the physical access to a real place, and the creative activities of compensation for inevitable gaps, to fill the voids in space-time between the dimension of the present and the parallel timelines, past and future. It is the highest exercise in a constant "untimely negative", like the moments that precede the verbalization of any thought. It is a place that initially appears distant and to which we gradually gain access, bringing it into focus, making connections, creating focal points, like entering the laboratory of the mind. Thus, the stories of a physical place, one that is inhabited and then abandoned, that changes its function over the years, witnessing the succession of faces and lives very different from each other, are like archives of memory, and the building itself is a tangle of synapses. As in every movie or psychological thriller, the house, the hospital, the monastery, the main building is always the entrance into the mind of the story’s protagonist — who must first lose themselves before retracing their steps, transitioning to a new state, to the resolution of one of the possible situations, though not without first falling into the illusions of the house, into the deceptive and smoky reflections of outlines that do not reveal themselves clearly right away. This is the experience conceived for a mechanics of memory. “iricordi / On the Perceptual Mechanics of Memory” is my site-specific project, created within the artistic context of the "SAPS Group – Experimental Group for Art and Perception Sicily", on the occasion of the residency/exhibition “RESIDENZE, between identity and memory”, held at the former Monastery of the Benedictines in Partanna . The site-specific project was developed within one of the monastery’s cells. It evokes the time when the building was used as a primary school and tells the story of a direct testimony from a centenarian woman, still alive at the time the project was created, who had attended primary school there and witnessed the inevitable decay and abandonment of that childhood place. The room represents a memory buried deep in the recesses of her mind. Before entering the smoky room, visitors encounter a b/w high-key video showing close-ups of her facial expressions, filmed during her passionate storytelling: eyes, age lines, expression wrinkles that are already time and narrative — without sound, only signs suspended in the air. (Photo documentation by Ciro Cangialosi).
