Reminiscence: Urban Memory Tour
Polina Kadkina
The REMINISCENCE: URBAN MEMORY TOUR, NYC EDITION book addresses and explores intricate relationships between memory and a place. Like bloggers geotagging their posts, our brains perform a similar maneuver: they tie the memories to a location, as brain cells encode spatial information for particular recollections. Using dérive method, I studied links between psyche and place in NYC through the prism of memories that were told to me by strangers I have met along the way. I then contextualized the memory with a photo of a place. One of my biggest inspirations was the Situationists International movement. It formulated the definition of psychogeography: ‘the study of the precise laws and specific effects of the geographical environment, consciously organized or not, on the emotions and behavior of individuals’. The movement paid a lot of attention to senses and emotions, as they connect with place and environment. Moreover, I was influenced by Sophie Calle ( the Address Book and Detachement projects), Sol LeWitt, and the famous Drawing Series. Following their path of structuring projects as well as setting up rules and restrictions, I created my own system, which I followed religiously. My project does not end with graduation: I will continue on studying cities through memories preserved in them, my next destinations being Moscow and Paris.