The mirror brims with brightness; a bumblebee has entered the room and bumps against the ceiling. Everything is as it should be, nothing will ever change, nobody will ever die. V. Nabokov: Speak, Memory
Since 1997 I have been making photos of my parents in the paradisiacal surroundings of our Russian summerhouse in an attempt to influence my own memory and our family history. Duration and memory are embedded in perception. Memory changes through repetition; perception is coloured by previous experiences but has also the power to initiate changes in memory. The summerhouse has become a collection of metaphors where time passes at a stretchable speed – like mythical time where the story continues but is repe
‘ Unreal Estate ’ combines the summerhouse saga with the more essayistic project revolving around the subject of ‘Autobiographical fiction’: the making of self-story, the fictional elements in memory and (national) identity, the use of personal metaphors, imagination as a tool in a visual or literary narrative, linear and non-linear ways of storytelling. Autobiography is a tool to give life meaning. The term ‘Autocommunication’ used by Yuri Lotman , describes an internal dialogue during which the informatio