Window_Archive: Ester Eva Damen

May 20 – June 28, 2019

Ester Eva Damen

In this Window Show, I exhibit packages, letters and postcards which I’ve sent to my home ad-dress while doing research in Valencia, Spain. I’ve left Amsterdam to do an exchange with the University of Valencia, to learn Spanish and follow, among others, a course in Spanish Cinema. While making notes on drifting in the city as by Situationist Guy Debord did or reading Tarkovski’s Sculpting in Time, I have made walks and bicycle tours that lasted for the free time granted to the user of the so-called Valen-bisi, a system that allows you to pick up a bike on one side of the city and bring it back on the other side. Maps, found objects and images reflect my trips. I have en-larged some of these fragments for the latest Artistic Research exhibition in NIeuw Dacota, Amsterdam and related them to my experience of time.

How does memory work and what role do physical objects play in this? This small project is an exercise in observing myself: what do I want to keep in an envelope in the end of the day? Is it worth a small walk to the yellow mailbox in Valencia? What I have found worthwhile to send to myself? The collection of yellow and brownish envelops is an archive which will not be opened. The way it is exhibited is not determined by me but by the way a friend in Amsterdam has arranged it. The sending to myself works as a delay

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