Toute la mémoire du monde (All the memory of the world), a 1956 film by Alain Resnais, is a portrait of the Bibliothéque Nationale in Paris. Artist Julieta Aranda and invited guests Judi Werthein and Adam Kleinman to lead a discussion following the film.
The discussion will address Aranda’s research on memory as it relates to Resnais’s film and her own Museum as Hub project All the memory of the world (We can remember it for you), which consists of several newly commissioned sculptures, a wall installation that has developed over a three-month period, a newspaper publication, and various representations of the past that require articulation. For Aranda, such articulations are part of a process in which we seek to track the truth and our witnessing of it—a type of memory that is contested but for which we become accountable. The discussion will also consider the role of cultural institutions on the production and conservation of collective memories, paying special attention to the artist’s interest in the New Museum’s current relationship to its own history.
Central to Julieta Aranda’s multidimensional practice are her involvement with circulation mechanisms and the idea of a “poetics of circulation,” of a politicized subjectivity/politicized subject, the perception and use of time, and the power over the imaginary. Her work has been exhibited internationally in venues such as the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, where she was the first artist doing a solo presentation for the “Intervals” exhibition series; Kunstverein Arnsberg; MOCA Miami; Witte de With; the Museum of Contemporary Art in Chicago; the 2nd Moscow Biennial; MUSAC, Spain; and the 7th Bienal de La Habana; among others. As a co-director of e-flux with Anton Vidokle, Aranda developed the projects Pawnshop (currently in Beijing), and e-flux video rental, which started in the e-flux storefront in New York in 2004, and has traveled to more than fifteen venues worldwide.
Adam Kleinman is a writer and curator who has programmed numerous projects ranging from intimate site-specific performances to museum-scale exhibitions, conferences, and various print-based endeavors. Most recently, Kleinman was Curator at Lower Manhattan Cultural Council. In this capacity, he created a series of programs including an annual nomadic lecture series, which opened rarely visited and often-prohibited spaces to host site-specific lectures by leading scholars addressing issues of justice, urban development, and economics. In addition to these duties, Kleinman developed and implemented LentSpace, a temporary sculpture park, performing arts venue, and public garden located on an entire vacant block in Manhattan. At LentSpace he presented a series of exhibitions, commissions, and events. In addition to his curatorial work, Kleinman is a frequent contributor to multiple magazines including Artforum, Bomb, e-flux journal, and Texte zur Kunst, for which he also runs a monthly column, New York Letters.
Judi Werthein is an artist that works across a range of media. She addresses strategies of subordination. Conflating the dominant form with that which it subordinates, her work destabilizes the authority that is often taken as a given. Interpreting identities as flexible, plastic, and untranslatable, Werthein conveys the experience of the outsider through the language of mass culture, re-conceiving Western conventions from an unfamiliar perspective. Her work has been shown at the Tate Modern, London, UK; De Appel, Amsterdam; the Aldrich Museum of Contemporary Art, Ridgefield, Connecticut; the Bronx Museum for the Arts, New York; and the Center for Contemporary Art, Vilnius, Lithuania. Werthein has also participated in Manifesta 7, Bolzano, Italy; InSite_05, San Diego/Tijuana; the Bienal de Pontevedra, Galicia; and the 7th Bienal de La Habana, Havana, among others. She is the founder and co-director with Graciela Hasper and Roberto Jacoby of El Centro de Investigaciones Artisticas in Buenos Aires, Argentina.
Alain Resnais, Toute la mémoire du monde (All the memory of the world), 1956. Film still
