This work is about a journey of return to Helsinki in December (2012), to reclaim memories attached to certain buildings and locations in the city, in particular the island of Suomenlinna in Helsinki harbour. Using photography, psychogeographical mapping and text the work explores how memory is interwoven with certain buildings, streets and places, generating complex affective mnemospheres linking both the inner and outer life. I use the term mnemosphere to describe the psychological process where the outer environment is infused with an affective overlay and lingers, like an afterimage or double exposure induced by material traces. Memory is held fast within and by the architecture of our lives. It is suddenly triggered by the opening of a physical door or the way shadows fall in the corner of a room revisited. Memories are like footprints of dust trailing across freshly painted floors. Gaston Bachelard in his theory of topoanalysis notes how “memories are motionless, the more securely they are fixed to space, the sounder they are.” Architecture contains and preserves more than the security of our material lives. It offers anchorage to the threads of sequences of recollection, the making sense and purpose of it all, which wrenched free from this foothold, can slip into oblivion, leaving us adrift and bereft. In this work I am exploring the interplay between journeying through real buildings and the memories they house.
The work includes a series of photographic prints and a limited edition phonebook, and was first shown in the show Describing Architecture, Place & Memory, curated by Antóin Doyle (2014)..
