Robbin Silverberg
Brooklyn, New York
robbinamisilverberg.com
Memory Walk
2018
archival inkjet printing & tempera painting on Dobbin Mill papers, cassette tape
9.75″ x 14″ x 1″ (closed)
Artist Statement
The memory palace is an ancient mnemonic device, which works with architectural space in one’s mind. Over the years, I have created my own, with specific objects of personal importance in order to remember them. This book presents three different memory palaces designed as walks: on the streets of Montevideo, Uruguay, in my home & studio in Brooklyn, and within the galleries of the Rijksmuseum in Amsterdam. As such, spatial and temporal memory all converge in this French Door structure, consisting of a stab binding of layered translucency on the left, along with a pamphlet on the right side, with throw-out pages.
Memory Walk in Montevideo presents walls that I had photographed in the streets of that city, then painted & re-photographed. Within its translucent pages are sheets with images of my objects. Memory Walk in the Rijksmuseum contains a text I wrote along with photos of those same objects juxtaposed with masterpieces in the museum’s collection. The memory walk in Brooklyn is presented by maps in the back of the book.
I repurposed a set of my handmade papers that had been painted using 2 robots (Artbots built by Käthe Wenzel, Berlin) for another project that was never completed. I went back into these paintings, adding my own lines of movement that indicate the travel from one object to another.
Each copy of the edition has an embedded cassette tape, a unique recording that connects to distinct memories:
– Mozart, Queen of the Night aria
– Weather Report, Black Market
– Penguin Café Orchestra
– Busi Mhlonga
– Billy Cobham
– Archie Shepp
– Lucio Dalla & Lucio Battisti
– The Roches, Maggie Adams, Joan Armatrading
– Bob Marley (artist proof)
The images, the objects, and locations all function as visual poetry… and the movement through spaces & pages of the book creates a dialogue and poetic logic for the reader to enjoy.