Christian Boltanski has wrangled with questions of memory and the archive for more than three decades with influential works such as Chases School (1986-1987) and Reserve (1989) collecting and exhibiting traces of those who lost their lives in the Holocaust.
More recently, he has taken these questions in a more personal directions with projects like The Life of C.B. (2011) in which he stored thousands of photographs of his studio in a cave in Tasmania.
STORAGE MEMORY, which will begin this month, continues this more introspective exploration of remembering, recording and archiving. For the project, each month Boltanski will produce ten one-minute videos of himself and his life. Anyone interested can sign up on his website, and, for 10 euros, receive monthly video dispatches from the artist. He plans to continue posting these videos for the rest of his life, and taken as a whole they will provide a kind of open-ended self portrait of the artist sent out like a public postcard to all those who subscribe.
By presenting the work on the internet rather than in a gallery or museum, Boltanski hopes to reach an audience beyond the world of contemporary art. As the months and years go by it will be intriguing to see how this ambitious project develops.
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| A memorial to nothing, Christian Boltanski's work at the Grand Palais, Paris, 2010 |
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