Construct a palace for the mind

a gallery for thought to roam

to shape and mold ideas as you would wet clay

localising them in physical, mental, digital domains

place each thought in an object in space for safekeeping

use your objects to recall the taste of madeleines

as amphorae to store the nectar of remembrance

the goldfish doesn’t get much credit

for its ability to recall the past

but has the luxury of seeing the world always anew

memory dribbles through our fingers

like liquid silver and gelatine

freezing for moments in a bath of salts and acids

latent imagery becomes fixed to the page

laminating liminal states in a film-like veneer

summoning Cicero

embed the past present in the future

preempting memory’s tendency to decay

wind elastic through the bends of a labyrinth

and situate each memory in its proper location

nested within a niche or on a marble ledge

and visit them from time to time

Memory Palace is based on the mnemonic technique of the same name, whereby spatial relations are used to aid recollection for rhetoric. Working with the materiality of conceptual associations and digital environments, this piece presents a nonlinear narration through a system of interrelated digital/conceptual objects. Due to the idiosyncratic nature of memory, each brings their own personal and cultural associations and the artwork fluctuates between a constructed representation of the artist’s own thought process and a structure onto which the viewer imposes their own meaning.