Memory Palace

Fig 1. sketchbook pages on exhibition (author's own)

 

These are some of my pages on the 'Memory Palace' exhibition, this exhibition is not easy to get your head around, it is a walk in book created by the author Hari Kunzru with 20 specially commissioned installations by graphic designers, illustrators and typographers. 'The story is set in a future London, hundreds of years after the world's information infrastructure was wiped out by an immense magnetic storm.' We were unable to take photos or sketch during this exhibition, so what I did do was take notes, whether I understood what they meant or not, if it stood out for me, or gave me the ability to pin some sort of meaning behind it, then I wrote it down. 'My fellow Londoners, cant you see how we are diminished? We are stunted, ravaged by disease. We pick about for things we can use.' What do you get from that? The story is based around the loss of technology and knowledge leading into a dark age, or 'Wilding' as the story explains it to be, this is a time in the future when humans live in complete union with nature. All power has been seized by a group called 'the Thing' that are a great council of rulers of the time of Withering who want to bring about the Wilding. They outlaw all recording, writing, art and collecting.

 

A sect is formed, this group of people are referred to as 'Memorialists'. They have figured out an ancient 'art of memory' in order to remember as much as they possibly can of the past, because without the past, civilisation has no future. The narrator of this story is accused of being a part of this sect and is put into prison. So the story goes on... him, in his prison cell, creating a memory palace within it.