MEMORY PALACE: A PERFORMANCE BY
ALISA BAREMBOYM AND SEUNG-MIN LEE
Tuesday, July 28th, at 7pm
RSVP requested: info@ luxembourgdayan.com
Luxembourg & Dayan is pleased to announce that it will host Memory Palace, a one-night performance by
Alisa Baremboym and Seung-Min Lee. The event is the latest in the gallery’s ongoing summer performance series Body/Building,
curated and organized by Tamar Margalit.
The Body/Building series will conclude on August 13th with the performance of 65°, by Madeline Hollander.
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When you were young, what did you want to be when you grew up? *********
What was the name of your first pet? ********
What was the first car you ever drove? ******
Where did you lose your virginity? *******
It’s a phantom flickering shadow. How many floors, how many baths, which way did the windows face? Where do I keep the spare buttons for my favorite coat? The internet security question is a stronghold, where our lives and technology embrace in trust and create actual value, saving companies millions in IT costs to come up with more secure systems; it exploits your descriptive life as its code and your memory, its key. These are the last keys that we physically hold onto as individuals in the virtual realm, the data bits float in between servers and our neurons simultaneously. The pictures we carry in our mind’s eye are still mostly safe and secure, cataloged in these immaterial boxes. We take comfort in knowing: you are your best asset. You provide your own security. It is biometrics in beta.
So you are still you, as long as you can hold onto your memories. The cloud remains accessible as long as we can still recount to ourselves who we are, stay in sound mind and body. Our bodies in this schema, provide points of weakness and vulnerability. Sometimes muscle memory trumps the mind—fingers tap in your PIN code before you can recall it on your own, but then the agitated mind may nervously click, drop the phone, crack the screen—be careful. What happens when we are not mindful and are presented with unforeseen circumstances? Do our bodies mechanically jump into muscle memory formations? We may need to massage them to keep from faltering at points of stress. These responses manifest the overheated, whirring, pace of multitasking our soft machines. How do we train ourselves to be embodied again?
This is a test in the annexation of the conscious mind, a space to experiment with our newfound adaptations.
About the Artists
Alisa Baremboym (b. 1982, Moscow) is an artist based in New York City. She recently presented her second solo exhibition at 47 Canal, New York. She has participated in numerous group exhibitions, including shows at the Schinkel Pavillon, Berlin; 47 Canal, New York; the Taipei Biennial, Taiwan; Hessel Museum Bard CCS, Annandale-on-Hudson; Künstlerhaus KM, Graz; UCCA, Beijing; Fridericianum, Kassel; MoMA PS1, Long Island City; Sculpture Center, Long Island City; Miguel Abreu Gallery, NY; and Luxembourg & Dayan, New York. An exhibition devoted to the artist’s work will be held at Glasgow Sculpture Studios as part of the forthcoming Glasgow International biennale in 2016.
Seung-Min Lee (b. 1981, Seoul) is an artist based in New York City whose oeuvre merges performance, sculpture, and theatre. She has recently performed and exhibited at such venues as Artists Space, New York; David Lewis Gallery, New York; Regina Rex, New York; Interstate Projects, New York; The SVA Theatre, New York; and the Shanghai Biennial.