DEPARTMENT FOR TEMPORARY MEMORY

Our memory is not an archive sorting events and storing them in a filing cabinet. It is a continuously changing, vivid interpretation and (re-)construction of reality. The act of remembering is a private and intimate moment which takes shape against the background of the collective remembrance, quoting past and present metaphors of memory. It is a current event happening in the present, intended to memorize and recall, to retain and delete personal data and impressions. The DEPARTMENT FOR TEMPORARY MEMORY allows us to observe this process in the dialogue between speaker and listener.

The Ensemble
Consists of artists, scientists, media theorists, archivists and collectors who will exchange their views on different aspects of the art of memory. There will be five different types of dialogue:
1. discussions among experts
2. presentations of archives and research projects
3. presentation/introduction of artists
4. interviews with guests
5. narrated autobiographies as selfexperiment

The maze-like building
of the Hamburger Kammerspiele becomes the stage where memories performs itself in the act of speaking: A performance in our own private theatre of the mind where we are allowed to be author, actor, director and prompter at the same time. The interviews will take place in the whole house, from the attic to the basement. Visitors will have access to all rooms and can look at all the archives on exhibition. It is possible to arrange individual appointments for interviews in some of the offices, and it is also possible to check in for guided tours of the house. All the interviews and discussions will be transmitted (on monitors and screens) into the central auditorium. Thus, the process of recollecting emerges as a momentary, incorporeal reflection in the "magic chamber of words".