Memory Instinct in a Digital Era

Amir Cohen, MyMmentoVid Curator

An occurrence in which a person turns his glance inwards for a split second – a passing moment when something appears in his consciousness, which will then jump back for a visit – uninvited – from time to time.

I. Journey. Dynamism, decisiveness and desire characterizing consciousness – mostly abstract – wears many masks… yet positioned at its center is the need to transmit and implant the spirit of things in every idea.

The journey is a serious plaything, out-of-the-box thought development as a building process trying to create new worlds, a rational database, and an unknown path to a pre-defined aim…

II. Thought. In the present era, the concept of memory unavoidably leads us to address multiplicity. Information of all shapes and sizes constantly envelops us – limitless, intruding without processing or supervision and creating detail-rich layers fusing together like atoms to molecules, creating identity…

III. Environment. We carry many screens on our shoulders – flickering ourselves, communicating and impressing with quick-on-the-draw information – accessible, attractive, and clearly expressed for all…

The bit stands at the root of social communications – no significant texture, color or weight, working in modules… This is what represents the nature of communication…

IV. Bit. Its ability to become absolutely anything, to adopt variable visual and representational characteristics, causes the bit – and by extension the user-society, the consuming, addicted society, to lose and adopt a new shape, to play, to construct, to change relentlessly, to lose/fuse itself in movement…

The Universe is rooted in movement, which, from its very existence, apparently issues accessible, edible, easily digestible content.

V. Prior Knowledge. The possibility of reading our life reality based on a familiar ladder of values. Clear ethical benchmarks are liable to lead to a faulty ideological philosophy, and a misunderstanding of the transmitted reality. Symbols and icons, known in their cultural, local context, are now undergoing a transformation into a well-cooked concoction. The taste perhaps sounds familiar but it is actually spearheading a whole new experience…

Technological applications in Art – those entwined throughout our souls and bodies, communicating with each other and present in other cycles in our lives too – are asking, from a critical perspective, to create a different set of ethical laws to those we are familiar with. These changes define our identity in a way that is unstoppably different and transforming. Putting the elements in a different order is not only a question of a different narrative, but is – in the full sense of the word – a completely new creation.

VI. Light. The moment – out of the blue – the imagination is ignited. An idea often bursts into the consciousness during some insignificant act; a creative, surprising and pleasurable action, which at first glance looks like someone unconnected to your existence. A split second in which you are not yourself…

And when you return to yourself, the idea will immediately ripen, getting comfortable and filling up with the right to live – a right that is an instinct to preserve the moment… to trust yourself to realize and define the essence of the idea – contents, appearance… aesthetics. This last trait will have decisive impact on its ‘quality of life.’

VII. Will this moment ever come back?

VIII. Life. A disappearing, dividing line between cultures… such a clear distinction that it illuminates the similarities at the root of every one of them. A game in which the artist’s hand skips between entities and their representations beyond time and place…

So much advanced technology is serving to create representations nourished by the past significance of cultures. The producers of these expressions are compiling a new lexicon – enjoying the lack of a sense of direction; not benefiting from any pre-conceived opinions… so they are free to create a new building.

IX. Unknown. Both detailed purposefulness on the one hand, and the artistic on the other, stem from a person’s thoughts. Inter-connected by their characteristic, aesthetic appearance and by eternal searching. The role of aesthetics is to arouse a positive feeling, an enjoyable feeling magnetically pulling to the rich fields of content.

The more our intellect leaves the edges unraveled and exposed, the more potential growth for a new idea to sprout from something already existing in our total environment.

About the MyMementoVid installation. An ongoing project that set itself the goal of reflecting experience along the axis of time. Clarifying and documenting what we remember and experience, and from that to create and attempt to influence.

The curators’ combined memories are the rich font of the project’s appearance and positioning, with all its constituent variables.

Continuity and constant transformability are critical to this project. Participating artists and art students from all over the world, and the video-art creations presented here, serve for us all as a glance at the past which marks the future, while expressing criticism constituting a milestone for social and inter-personal achievement.

Amir Cohen