Kode is proudly hosting "The Tourist" at Permanenten. This is a part of Bergen Assembly 2022's Yasmine and the Seven Faces of the Heptahedron.
Memory has something artistic about it, because the reality in it has been modified and perfected by the imagination.
The Tourist, in the order of appearance, is the seventh character encountered in Yasmine’s quest for the Heptahedron.
Equipped with a third eye (a camera) and solid armour (bucket hat, sunglasses, bumbag, and tanning cream), the Tourist travels the world energised and on the lookout. “I am a memories hunter!” he says.
Despite the faults that are attributed to the Tourist, who is mainly accused of fuelling superficial consumerism and of participating in the world’s collapse through the industrial expansion of travel, this individual is nevertheless in search of sense.
Indeed, the Tourist is hunting for memories; the very memories that prove our existence, our otherness, and which make us unique beings with something singular to share with the other. With all their senses alert, in the middle of Venice’s Piazza San Marco or at the top of the Great Pyramid of Giza, the Tourist becomes immersed in all manner of unimaginable situations in order to “take” memories.
As the psychologist Christof Kuhbandner points out: “To become a souvenir, the event experienced will only be anchored in memory if it possesses a novelty value that distinguishes it in part from the content already stored. This is why a dog that brings back a stick will generally not leave a significant trace in our memory, but a dog playing the piano will.”**
Don't works of art also try to play the piano, in order to remain engraved in our memories? Isn't it through their exceptional character, singularity, or exoticism that they enter our minds? And isn't memory the most formidable art critic?
To bring the Tourist's memories to life, this exhibition unites the exotic works of Daniel Buren, Sol Calero, and Dominique Gonzalez-Foerster.
Rendez-vous at Permanenten and Kafé Mat & Prat at Engensenteret Care Home, and to find out more about what goes on in the head of this character read Side Magazine: The Tourist.
Bergen Assembly 2022 is convened by Saâdane Afif and curated by Yasmine d’O.
For more information, please visit: www.bergenassembly.no
* Henri de Régnier (1864–1936), quote cited by Bernard Quiriny in L’égoïste est celui qui ne pense pas à moi (The Egoist is the One Who Does Not Think About Me), 2015.
** Christof Kuhbandner, “La construction du souvenir” (The Construction of Memory), Pour la Science 102, February 2019.