Indepth Arts News:
"Diane Samuels: Inscription - multimedia work explores memory and meaning
"
2001-09-15 until 2002-02-24
Carnegie Museum of Art
Pittsburgh, PA,
USA
Diane Samuels: Inscription is a multimedia installation that
explores the layers of meaning surrounding personal memories. Inscription combines old and new media, including
handwritten transcriptions, photography, video projection, audio recording,
and books constructed of hand-lettered glass tiles, to present the
personal stories of two people in ways that reveal the complexity,
fragility, and elusiveness of memories as personal and historic artifacts.
Pittsburgh artist Diane Samuels has worked on Inscription for more than five
years, conducting interviews, making audio and video recordings, gathering
historical data and satellite images, and painstakingly constructing the
installation. Samuels uses these materials to relate two compelling stories
in ways that suggest unexpected and intricate networks of meaning beyond the
narratives themselves.
The first of the stories is the tale of Norma Perlmutter, who in the 1920s,
at the age of five and a half, emigrated with her family from Warsaw,
Poland. Norma Perlmutter's story recounts her family's reasons for leaving
their home, her recollections of life in the Jewish quarter of Warsaw, and
the journey over the Atlantic and entry into the United States through Ellis
Island. The other story is that of Otmar Gotterbarm, who in 1945, at the
age of three and a half, witnessed the downing of an American warplane near
his home in Unterwilzingen, Germany.
The verbatim stories of Norma and Otmar provide the raw material for
Inscription, and in some ways, Samuels regards her role as that of a scribe.
However, in the artist's hands, the narratives are purposely fragmented for
reassembly. Viewers of Inscription are invited to absorb
information-through sight, sound, and touch-about parts of each tale and,
through the lens of their own understanding, see personal meanings in the
fragments.
Each component of Inscription invites observation and interpretation. For
example, visitors will see two stands holding handmade books. One bears
Norma's story on its pages, the other, Otmar's. The paper in the books is
made from pulp that contains bits of their clothing. At first glance, the
pages appear to be blank, but a closer look reveals that they actually
contain the stories of Otmar and Norma in the watermark. Requiring the
closest scrutiny to be read, these hidden stories hint at other possible
rewards for painstaking observation.
Photographs of the foreheads of Norma and Otmar are displayed alongside
images of the handwritten text of their stories that are reduced in size and
legible only when magnified. At a glance, patterns in the lines of text and
the lines in the skin can be seen. Looking closely, the visitor can see
that lines form the letters, words, and sentences in the story and likewise
form patterns in the skin. Sensing this common structural element hints at
the possibility of finding further associations and deeper appreciation in
the smallest and most fragmentary artifacts.
Layered video images from sites described in the narratives, historical
photographs, pictures of reenacted events, and bits of the handwritten text
are projected on the gallery walls. As visitors read the paper and glass
books and study the images, speakers recessed in the wall softly project
audio fragments-the voices of Norma and Otmar telling their stories along
with the voice of the artist spelling every word of the stories. As if
eavesdropping on a conversation emanating from the room next door, visitors
have to press their ears to the wall and pay careful attention in order to
discern the words.
Other works in Inscription provide further possibilities for intended and
unintended meaning. The exhibition has four large glass panels. Two
contain the full text of Otmar's story, the other two, Norma's. From a
distance, these books appear to be shattered panes of glass. Close
inspection reveals that the panels are assembled from 90,000, *-inch-square,
hand-engraved glass tiles and each tile bears one letter of the words in the
narratives. These panels, like the other pieces in Inscription challenge us
to hunt for meaning and reward those of us who look and listen carefully.
According to Samuels, the personal stories of Norma and Otmar inspired and
challenged her. It was the voices themselves, the process of listening and
speaking, the fragility and the delicacy of these fragments of memories,
that interested me the most; and although my starting point was the
narrative, the words, the stories took me to other places. My goal isn't to
re-tell the stories, but to give a key to a sense of my impressions and
reactions to the stories and the thoughts they generated, she said.
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