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Gunilla Heilborn takes step two in her memory trilogy

By on September 30, 2018

Is it possible to construct a system that holds the memory of all humanity?
It’s time for Part Two of Gunilla Heilborns (as per her opinion), somewhat lengthy trilogy about memory features. This time in the form of a Lecture Performance called “BOKEN” where she and her assistant Louise Peterhoff will dig in the memorys different nooks.

All the news have their critics.
In the 300’s, before our countdown, Platon went round in Athens and grieved over the art of writings spreading.
– “How will people remember something now that they can write down all they need to remember? They will stop practicing their memory and relying on the written, they will not remember things by searching themselves, they will be completely dependent on retrieving memory by themselves.”

Nevertheless, people have come in new ways to place their memories outside themselves; long rhymed epics, cave paintings and medieval cathedrals.
Just buildings turned out to be excellent storage places for collective memories, and architecture was the longest of humanity’s most prominent expressions. However, this gets an abrupt end in 1454 when Gutenberg inventes the printing press. The human mind then finds an even more efficient storage place for our memories. A technique that is not only more resilient and durable than architecture, but also easier to carry – the printed book.
But with the printed book comes also the linear narrator’s tyranny.

“BOKEN” is part two of Gunilla Heilborn’s (as her own opinion), somewhat elongated trilogy of memory features that she started in 2017 with the performance “The Wonderful and The Ordinary”. This time she stands on stage with her assistant Louise Peterhoff and asks if it is possible to construct a system that holds the memory of all humanity. Or if that was just something that the renaissance people managed. At that time, they had access to the magical effect of the perfect proportions.

“BOKEN” is a Lecture Performance with text as a base – a format that Heilborn began to develop 2015 with her performance The Knowledge (2015). The performance also includes Bilder & Siffror, Ljud & Dans, and Textilkonst by Katarina Wiklund.

Gunilla Heilborn “BOKEN”
2-4 October 2018, Dansens Hus Small stage

Helena Olofsson, Culture & Music, Stockholm
MyGuide2Stockholm