SW11. Volodya Ermak

MEMORY PATH

Санкт-Петербу́рг, Ленинградская область, Russia

In different epochs and centuries there were many famous persons who lived in Saint-Petersburg. It is difficult to walk in the city historical area and not to notice the plenty of memorial plate on the walls. These marble and granite signs are silent presence of the history. Walking through Kolomna district we see physical evidences of someone’s past, but usually it risks remaining unnoticed. Stones can’t speak. They disappear in the urban landscape. The great diversity of lives behind them merges to the monotony multitude. Personal histories of people, who once lived here reduced to ultra shot immortalized stone curriculum vitae. Sometimes such a plate is an only evidence of one’s life within the city memory. Half of our sound-point dedicated to not so much popular persons who were involved in the cultural and academic life. Each person, whose life we caught in the sound, had a dominated sound in his/her life. This sound could be connected with his activity, life choice, fate and destiny. We highlight people of different historical period and different activity. Their diverse destinies are as different as sounds which surrounded them – from the silence of the concentrated work and peaceful routine to rolling clatter and astonishment. These sounds could possibly describe their lives. For this sound-walk we apply our modern representation and understanding of events of the past to the committed facts and connect it with the present moment. We are hearing the history and mind the present time. Using the sound we lay the path from one human destiny to the other. The trajectory of the walk was curved point to point, where the points are a scoring place of memory. The past reborn, it blends in one sound with the present. Each sound-point is not only the space of memory which was attempted to activate, but also the present moment. The great history is inevitably distorting because we have made the choice how to «dub» the past from the perspective of the modern human. Wandersmänner – the flaneurs or rushing people with their own glimpses are not able fully comprehend the past. For us the history of a person from those days is done, it is something that exist post factume. We also should bear in mind that this history is full of additions and sequels, which continue the life after the life. The project supplies the past with contemporary associations which aimed to cause emotional response. This sound-path reveals the layers of the history and piles of the historical layers. It reminds about the existence of millions of forever silent destinies (and millions accompanying sounds), memory of which does not imprinted at all.

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SW11. Volodya Ermak

Part of this walk

MEMORY PATH

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