Signs of the Times

While researching her project project Signs of the Times Karolina Żyniewicz collected material traces and memories from the COVID–19 pandemic. In Spring 2021, she started collecting masks from the public areas of Berlin where she lived. In the next step of the process she began to meet people and hear about their memories the COVID pandemic.  Every person she interviewed received a fresh medical mask, and was asked one question: What do you think you will remember the most from the time of the COVID-19 pandemic, ten to twenty years from now? After collecting numerous interviews she transcribed and translated them by hand into a series of notebooks. She also gave the masks to several laboratories for genetic analysis of the microorganisms contained therein.  

The performative installation Sign of the Times in this exhibition was developed by the artist to bring together human and nonhuman matter using new technologies, but requires a human (the artist's) presence and action; here technology is an extension of the human (and nonhuman) but the human is also an extension of technology, an apt analogy of our times. During the exhibition the artist transcribes entries from her notebooks onto a tablet using a stylus, the handwritten results appear on a monitor on the wall. On another monitor the genetic transcript of microbial material from one of the masks appears letter by letter, line by line.  In Żyniewicz's words  "The work is dedicated to remembering and forgetting, appearing and disappearing, resisting the passage of time, and confronting the imperfections of human memory." 
More information at: https://artlaboratory-berlin.org/exhibitions/signs-of-the-times/  

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