The project VICE-VERSA is about memory. Claudia Vitari realized an installation inside an abandoned villa in Halle an der Saale, Germany. The artist made a research about the history of the place and the people who lived there. The result was a glimpse of German history from 1900 to nowadays from the point of view of a normal family, an investigation about how memories can influence our lives.
We usually can see the same subject in two (or more) different ways. This depends on our mood and the experiences we had in life: experiences are like lenses, and the more we grow the more we accumulate. We order our lives into a scheme we build. Memories are crystallized in our mind even though life is going on.
The temporary installation was divided into two parts, taking place on two different floors of the building. The first floor was the explanation of the concept: two bedrooms looking exactly the same, but one would make the spectators feel good and safe and the other one would give them a bad feeling. The effect was created through music, order/disorder, sentences written of paper, pictures…
The bedroom represents our intimate side. The way we see the external world depends on our mood, even though a place doesn’t change physically.
On the second floor, spectators could understand how it happens, analysing the history of the house and of the family that used to live there: photos, original plans of the villa, newspaper articles were printed on glass (crystallized memories) and were hidden everywhere. It was possible to see through memories how the present had come into being. While walking through the rooms, the voices of the family members who used to live there were telling the story of the house and odours (food or tabacco for example) were used to recreate the atmosphere of the past.
Installation
2004
Silkscreening on glass, sound, smell design and drawings
