The artist Oriol Vilanova will represent Spain at the next Venice Biennale with The Remains, a project curated by Carles Guerra. He will transform the pavilion into a pseudo-museum using thousands of postcards collected over twenty years. The mural installation questions traditional modes of art exhibition and legitimization, using these everyday objects as vestiges of personal and collective memory.
The Technology of Accumulation: Physical Archive vs. Digital Database 📚
The project operates with a logic opposite to the immateriality of the digital archive. The central technology is the physical act of accumulation and manual classification over decades. The installation, a mural without apparent hierarchies, requires meticulous spatial planning to distribute thousands of unique postcards. This organization system challenges algorithmic indexing, proposing a visual and tactile navigation through history.
The First "Physical Spam"? The Infinite Collection of Others' Memories 🤔
One wonders if, after two decades rummaging through flea markets, Vilanova has reached the level of advanced collector: the one who already has postcards from places he has never been to and people he doesn't know. His pavilion will probably be the only place in Venice where you will feel overwhelmed by memories that are not yours, a feeling familiar to anyone who has opened a box of old things at their parents' house.