Erinnerungsbox

My project is inspired by the book “The mysterious Flame of Queen Loana” written by Umberto Eco. The protagonist lost his episodic memory and tries to regain it by searching for traces of his childhood in the attic of his parental home.

Even though I have all of my memories, I wanted to make a similar experience as the protagonist of the book. I looked through the old boxes wie store in our storage room and I came across a huge amount of children’s drawings. As I looked through them, I started to realise how different the world is seen through children’s eyes. I thought that before a kid starts to talk in a more complex way or write, it starts to draw to show needs, wishes and emotions.

Accordingly, children’s drawings are an important channel of communication, full of signs and metaphors. I wanted to represent figuratively that you can read from children’s drawings like from a book, if you devote a moment to them, pay attention and try to bring an order into the “sheet-chaos” of memories. At first my collage is a memory box. It is simple and labeled as the original one was. If you open it,  you have a long, confusing and loose row of children’s drawings in front of you. It is very unwieldy to look at the long format. But if you take the time to arrange the drawings into a folded stack, fold the top and inside wings of the box inward, lift the stacked drawings from the inside cover of the box, turn it 180° to the right, and now connect the two magnetic sides together, you get an orderly book.