Reading Rämistrasse #148: Ana Victoria Bruno on SCRIPT – MEMORY at Kunsthalle Winterthur

In the context of the recent increased focus on solidarity and community care within the field of arts, the exhibition SCRIPT – MEMORY takes a step backwards to look at why we should care about our communities, and at the role of collectives in shaping individual identities. The exhibition text suggests that we grow up learning how to behave in society, enacting certain scripts throughout our life. The group show works against these scripts, the exhibited artists practising a loss of control through collective making of their pieces, either in a practical or conceptual way. This shift is particularly relevant in the field of arts, where the traditional idea of the artist-genius still constitutes a primary reference for many publics. By dismantling the role of individuality in the creation process, the exhibition SCRIPT – MEMORY acts in line with Rosi Braidotti’s call for more community-based experiments to transform ways of living, emphasising the need for localised, communal approaches to address the social inequalities revealed by the Covid pandemic.(1)

The show at Kunsthalle Winterthur is a beautifully choreographed presentation of honest unveilings of collectively-shared intimacy from real life. The structures of fiction fall apart with the work I can hear my mother sing by Jordan Lord, the first artwork visitors encounter when walking into the exhibition. The piece is made in collaboration with the artist’s mother, Deborah Lord, whose footage filmed in and around the house is combined with her voice-over, recorded in a second instance, which describes what we see. Deborah Lord’s narration alternates between visual descriptions of the scenes and emotional responses to the images, suggesting that the surfacing of memories and emotional associations disrupts ideas of factual reality and linear narratives, questioning the documentary medium.

While Jordan Lord works with family members, Chris Kaufmann addresses the role of another kind of kinship in the shaping of his practice. His work CallMeChris Archive is a collection of short films showing the artist in his teenage years lip-synching to songs in his room. The films are heavily edited with the app Video Star, popular among his peers in the 2010s, and shared online with an enthusiastic and supportive community. The videos made between 2012 and 2015 are shown side by side with Atlas, a multilayered canvas from 2023 containing lenticular printed portraits of the artist turning into animals’ faces as the viewer moves. The juxtaposition of the two works draws a direct link between the artist’s teenage experience as a Video Star user and his interest in the evolution of notions of critique and self-awareness within communities in the digital realm.

Holding accessibility, intimacy and honesty as non-negotiable values, Fernanda Laguna’s work reminds us of the importance of sincere and inclusive communication in community-making. The Argentinian artist, poet and founder of several galleries in Buenos Aires, has established a long-lasting career based on responses to the needs of the local communities there. Her contributions to the exhibition are three materially dense paintings, framed by woven wicker, of anthropomorphised shapes displaying emotions. As in a personal journal, Laguna’s paintings open up her own emotions to the viewer, portraying and communicating complexity through simple universal shapes and codes.

The artworks on show are brought together and contextualised politically by the presence of the magazine Heresies, shown under glass on a shelf along the wall: a feminist, politically engaged magazine published between 1977 and 1993 in New York organised by Heresies Collective. A large and multidisciplinary group of volunteers was involved in the publishing of the magazine, working with an horizontal rather than hierarchical approach. The presence of Heresies magazine in the exhibition frames the artworks in the exhibition as operating within a socio-political fabric as opposed to representations of sporadic experiences of enclosed communities or self-celebratory gestures.

As the first exhibition of the Kunsthalle Winterthur under the directorship of Geraldine Tedder, the show seems to herald programming aimed at confirming and further developing the role of Kunsthalle Winterthur as a community-centred space, a role that the Kunsthalle has held historically.

(1) Braidotti, R. “We” Are In This Together, But We Are Not One and the Same. Bioethical Inquiry 17, 465–469 (2020). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11673-020-10017-8

SCRIPT – MEMORY, Chaumont-Zaerpour, Heresies, Chris Kauffmann, Fernanda Laguna, Jordan Lord, Tiphanie Kim Mall, Rietlanden Women’s Office and Niklas Taleb, Kunsthalle Winterthur, 13 April–14 July 2024