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A BOX OF MEMORIES- Nataša Vasiljevic

PARTE DEL NUMERO 01 DE EDICIONES CONQUISTA

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I think some objects speak better than other objects and some objects are better to speak with. I wouldn't say necessarily that they have their own soul but they have their own voice.

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LECTURAS Y TEXTOS

-Mark Dion

Can a house be an archive? If it can, what kind of archive would it be? Do we think of a house as a public good or rather as a private one? If it is both, how do these contradictions coexist in a sealed box called the archive? Can we decide which memory to keep and which one to exclude? If a house is made of a single core, how can we manipulate its memories separately or apart from each other? Would it be possible for it not to speak to us at all? In the end, we are told to think that archives don’t speak unless they are opened. So avoiding to wake the phantoms, we don't dare to touch.

De Borneohof is a building located in Amsterdam, �e Netherlands. �e main project consists in replacing 230 small houses with new housing. �e apartments are grouped around courtyards, which are reached through four spacious gates. Two of these gates have pieces of artwork inside which makes them di�erent from the others. �e artist is actually a Norwegian designer Piet Hein Eek who decided to cover the walls by using the old doors. However, they are not just any kind of old doors. He collected the doors that were about to be completely demolished and destroyed along with the houses. �ose are the doors that lived together with the neighborhood that followed its changes and mutations. �e doors, through which all the local residents passed by, exchanged their information and fused their lives. �e main characteristic of such and object is its passage, its exchange, its “pass trough”. Once they've been closed, all the secrets are blocked with them. �ey cannot communicate nor have any exchange value. Just like the thrown umbrella a�er the rain, it looses its function and essence. �ey are only the phantomatic appearance of what they used to be. Without saying anything, they just stare. Nonetheless, inside this new building, which is deprived of any trace of human life, the old doors keep a memory of past stories, of what they used to be. �ese wooden phantoms are the monuments of themselves. �ey still carry the traces of their previous lives. Each of them tells a di�erent story, but a door to their mysteries remains closed

Another example of the sealed past which arises memories by only existing in the present is a well know artwork of Rachel Whiteread, House, 1992. �e artist bought one of the last remaining Victorian houses in East London in order to make it eternal. Each house in Grove Road was demolished except of this one. It stood completely alone and naked in the middle of the big park, which extended itself behind it, gazing at the new architecture in front of it. �e idea was to try to solidify its invisible essence, to make the house talk about itself in the quietest way possible. �e artist mummi�ed the interior using the cement a�er which she throws down the walls. What remained was a solid block of cement, a big white structure without any entrance or exits, a mute place with a distorted interior that became the exterior. Once more, we learn about history by reading the past’s subtle signs, by watch-ing its multiple angles and scratches..

�is unique work of art awakened many memories, in fact memories that were not supposed to be remembered. �at was the reason why the City Council decided to demol-ish this monument that testi�ed, far to well, the history of its time. As it seems, monu-ments are good only while their silence remain unutterable. House was demolished only few months a�er its construction, in 1993. Today, this place carries no signs of existence of the Victorian houses that testi�ed the social background, through the centuries, of that particular space in London, nor does it give any traces of the last House standing there.

So then, why do we preserve? Why do we keep on holding the past so much? What do we seek among these dusty elements of a yesterday's tomorrow? How can we use the past in making it a new tomorrow? Can we go on without it? Modernity said no to it, postmoder-nity went back using it, and today we are searching a new pattern while fearfully holding the old ones. One thing is certain; we cannot go further without understanding our ruins. Very o�en though, what we �nd is a bundle of uncanny feelings. And that old stranger is what we need to confront. We need to understand the perturbations inherited. Each object will tell us more about its owner, each line about its author and a picture about its creator. �is quest is only fruitful if it is in a continuous contact with reality. Use the past in order to be critic in the present. Use past for the present.

Still, this is not always the case. Sometimes we can get stuck in the past itself. Not willing to confront it with the time that is passing by along with the new past that is accumulating itself. In 1975, two directors made a documentary movie Gray Gardens. �e story depicts an old lady, Edith Bouvier Beal, and her middle-aged daughter, Little Edie. Two protago-nists are coming from an aristocratic family, as an aunt and cousin of Jacqueline Kennedy. While the camera goes on, we are entering more and more in their life through the home that becomes more like a shelter. �ey live with cats and raccoons; they never throw anything away, nor put anything new. It is a real box of memories, where time seems to cease; plants are invading the space and animals are marking territory. Family Bouvier Beal retreated itself from society. Its members almost never go out, they stay in their home where everything is well known and where there is no room for oblivion. Enclosed inside

the memories they have chosen, these two women live in a proper time, inside a living archive, inside a dream. �ey have decided not to care about the present and to live in a constant past. As if the past is constantly recreating itself, keeping them in the exact time and space they would want to be.

Usually, when one thinks of a place where the past is gathered, one thinks of an archive, for they are considered the real and legitimate “custodians” of those old times. But as we have seen from these few examples, a past can speak to us in many di�erent ways. Sometimes an archive can be a building, other times a monument or one could simply decide to live in it, to make it a home. �ere is no right or unique way to gather and preserve the past. �is time, it was under the image of a house. Nevertheless the multiple forms of archives are everywhere and should be seen as such. We should only learn how to make them our future and create something out of them. So that tomorrow, these new creations could be called a past: the one from which new forms will grow.

Nataša Vasiljević

Grey Gardens 1975 por Albert Maysles y David Maysles

�is unique work of art awakened many memories, in fact memories that were not supposed to be remembered. �at was the reason why the City Council decided to demol-ish this monument that testi�ed, far to well, the history of its time. As it seems, monu-ments are good only while their silence remain unutterable. House was demolished only few months a�er its construction, in 1993. Today, this place carries no signs of existence of the Victorian houses that testi�ed the social background, through the centuries, of that particular space in London, nor does it give any traces of the last House standing there.

So then, why do we preserve? Why do we keep on holding the past so much? What do we seek among these dusty elements of a yesterday's tomorrow? How can we use the past in making it a new tomorrow? Can we go on without it? Modernity said no to it, postmoder-nity went back using it, and today we are searching a new pattern while fearfully holding the old ones. One thing is certain; we cannot go further without understanding our ruins. Very o�en though, what we �nd is a bundle of uncanny feelings. And that old stranger is what we need to confront. We need to understand the perturbations inherited. Each object will tell us more about its owner, each line about its author and a picture about its creator. �is quest is only fruitful if it is in a continuous contact with reality. Use the past in order to be critic in the present. Use past for the present.

Still, this is not always the case. Sometimes we can get stuck in the past itself. Not willing to confront it with the time that is passing by along with the new past that is accumulating itself. In 1975, two directors made a documentary movie Gray Gardens. �e story depicts an old lady, Edith Bouvier Beal, and her middle-aged daughter, Little Edie. Two protago-nists are coming from an aristocratic family, as an aunt and cousin of Jacqueline Kennedy. While the camera goes on, we are entering more and more in their life through the home that becomes more like a shelter. �ey live with cats and raccoons; they never throw anything away, nor put anything new. It is a real box of memories, where time seems to cease; plants are invading the space and animals are marking territory. Family Bouvier Beal retreated itself from society. Its members almost never go out, they stay in their home where everything is well known and where there is no room for oblivion. Enclosed inside

the memories they have chosen, these two women live in a proper time, inside a living archive, inside a dream. �ey have decided not to care about the present and to live in a constant past. As if the past is constantly recreating itself, keeping them in the exact time and space they would want to be.

Usually, when one thinks of a place where the past is gathered, one thinks of an archive, for they are considered the real and legitimate “custodians” of those old times. But as we have seen from these few examples, a past can speak to us in many di�erent ways. Sometimes an archive can be a building, other times a monument or one could simply decide to live in it, to make it a home. �ere is no right or unique way to gather and preserve the past. �is time, it was under the image of a house. Nevertheless the multiple forms of archives are everywhere and should be seen as such. We should only learn how to make them our future and create something out of them. So that tomorrow, these new creations could be called a past: the one from which new forms will grow.

Nataša Vasiljević

1,000 Doors Project por el Arquitecto Choi Jeong-Hwa

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