Read the Memory Marathon Live Blog
'At culture's bleeding edge... non-stop marathon of art, talks, music and performance' -
The Guardian
Friday 12 October (6pm - 11pm)
Saturday 13 October (12 noon - 10pm)
Sunday 14 October (11am - 9pm)
Internationally renowned artists, writers, historians, musicians, filmmakers, neuro-scientists, robotics engineers, a scent expert and the Grand Master of Memory gather in a glowing, geodesic dome for the Serpentine Gallery's 7th annual Marathon
VIEW FULL PROGRAMME
Over three days during
Frieze Art Fair Week, the Serpentine Gallery stages the
Memory Marathon, the seventh annual festival of ideas inspired by the annual Pavilion commission. This multi-disciplinary event will feature a wide range of participants, including leading artists, architects, film-makers, musicians, scientists, theorists and writers in a continuous, performative programme of explorations, musical and theatrical performances, film screenings, discussions and experiments.
Audiences can attend specific events - ranging from 15-minute solo presentations to 45-minute discussions or performances - throughout each day of the Memory Marathon. Or, they can immerse themselves fully in the three-day festival, during which time they will be transported on a deeply evocative journey through music, culture and history; consider the importance of memory in law and biology; learn what animal brains 'do' and how machines 'think' in the company of experts from a wide range of scientific fields; discover the impact an increasingly digitised world has on memory; learn tips on how to remember a 1,000-digit number in an hour; and experience first-hand the powerful links between the senses and memory.
The three-day event begins on Friday 12 October with
La Suite, a thrilling five-hour performance by acclaimed Lebanese sound artist
Tarek Atoui, who together with fourteen internationally renowned musicians will take audiences on a mesmerising journey through Tarab and classical Arab music recorded from the early 20th century onwards.
Among more than 60 participants confirmed so far include former REM vocalist
Michael Stipe; filmmakers
Amos Gitai and
David Lynch, who will present a new film; historians
Jay Winter and
Donald Sassoon, who together will explore the theme of 'War Memory'; celebrated neuroscientist
Israel Rosenfield, who will introduce 'The Problem of Memory' with writer
John Hull, robotics expert
Luc Steels and Grand Master of Memory
Ed Cooke; artists
Olivier Castel and
Ed Atkins on 'Deception and Self-Deception'; scent expert
Sissel Tolaas on 'Sensory Memory'. Other contributors include Harvard astronomy professor
Dimitar Sasselov; writer and critic
John Berger; writer
Douglas Coupland; poet
John Giorno; writer and cultural historian
Marina Warner; author and technologist
China Miéville; artists
Gilbert & George; architects
Jacques Herzog,
Pierre de Meuron and
Fumihiko Maki; composer
Gavin Bryars with poet and painter
Etel Adnan.
As professor, author and scientist Israel Rosenfield has noted, 'memory is relationship; on the one hand our temporal relationships and on the other our spatial relationships'. This year's Marathon will approach memory as an active practice that can question received ideas - a probing of the old in the name of the new.
The Memory Marathon is dedicated to
Eric Hobsbawm.
Confirmed participants:
Etel Adnan, Ida Applebroog, Siah Armajani, Ed Atkins, Tarek Atoui, Lutz Bacher, John Berger, Dara Birnbaum, Tim Bliss, Geta Bratescu, Gavin Bryars, Daniel Buren, Evan Calder Williams, Oliver Castel, Mariana Castillo Deball, Dennis Cooper, Douglas Coupland, Michael Craig-Martin, Alison Crawshaw, Adam Curtis, Pierre de Meuron, Brian Dillon, Marcus du Sautoy (in collaboration with Richard Rhys of the Pattern Foundry), Joshua Foer, Alberto Garutti, Gilbert & George, John Giorno, Amos Gitai, David Goldblatt, Dominique Gonzalez-Foerster, Alice Herz-Sommer, Jacques Herzog, Richard Hollis, John Hull, Richard Hollis, Ragnar Kjartansson, KTL (Stephen O'Malley and Peter Rehberg), Isabel Lewis, Fumihiko Maki, Viktor Mayer-Schönberger, China Miéville, Jeremy Millar, Adrian Piper, Alice Rawsthorn, Richard Rhys, James Richards, Israel Rosenfield, Jacques Roubaud, Dimitar Sasselov, Donald Sassoon, Ella Shohat, Cally Spooner, Luc Steels, Michael Stipe, Jan Szymczuk, Jean-Yves Tadié, Timothy Taylor, Sissel Tolaas, Gisèle Vienne, Marina Warner, Ai Weiwei, Eyal Weizman, Richard Wentworth, Jay Winter, Lynette Yiadom-Boakye
See all Memory Marathon participants
Performers of
Tarek Atoui's La Suite:
Uriel Barthélémi, John Butcher, Mira Calix, Susie Ibarra, Hassan Khan, KK Null (Kazuyuki Kishino), Lukas Ligeti, Robert Lowe, Ikue Mori, Sara Parkins, Zeena Parkins, Ghassan Sahhab, Sam Shalabi.
Four hours of the
Memory Marathon will be broadcast live on
The Space.
.......
FULL PROGRAMME
(Subject to change: please check this page regularly)
SATURDAY 13 OCTOBER
12 noon - 2pm
Julia Peyton-Jones, Hans Ulrich Obrist
Introduction
Israel Rosenfield
The invention of memory
Ed Cooke
Memory as a special form of perception
John Hull
Blindness and memory: being reborn into a different world
Luc Steels
Body image and memory - a robotic experiment
2-4pm
Marina Warner
Voices from the library: Sharahzad and the 1001 Nights
Mariana Castillo Deball
Something like the memory of a monument becoming heavier because it's a memory
Jean-Yves Tadié
Is there such a thing as involuntary memory?
Marcus du Sautoy in collaboration with Richard Rhys of The Pattern Foundry
Memory: the mathematical mind and the art of pattern searching
Ella Shohat
The Arab-Jew: taboo memories, diasporic voices
Viktor Mayer-Schönberger
The virtue of forgetting
4-8pm
Donald Sassoon
Constructing historical memories
Jay Winter
The memory boom and human rights
Dennis Cooper, Gisèle Vienne & KTL (Stephen O'Malley and Peter Rehberg)
Dennis Cooper reads texts from his collaborative work with Gisèle Vienne
Dominique Gonzalez-Foerster
M.2062
Gavin Bryars and Etel Adnan
Five senses for one death
James Richards
Surface tension
Ways of Listening: A conversation between John Berger and Tilda Swinton, directed by Colin MacCabe, followed by a conversation with John Berger
8-11pm
Daniel Buren
Sissel Tolaas
Smell and memory: what could happen if one tore down the visual and remained with the smell of it, with Jacques Herzog
Michael Craig-Martin
China revisited: a collaboration with my grandfather 1910-2012
John Giorno
Liam Gillick
Douglas Coupland
This is not a cloud
Michael Stipe
Michael Stipe Michael Stipe Michael Stipe
David Lynch
SUNDAY 14 OCTOBER
11am - 2pm
Julia Peyton-Jones and Hans Ulrich Obrist
Introduction
Siah Armajani
Tim Bliss
The machinery of memory
Richard Wentworth
Rear view mirror (la voie périphérique)
Lynette Yiadom Boakye
Nights to remember
David Goldblatt
Jan Szymczuk
Ed Cooke and Joshua Foer
Memory as a special form of perception
Eyal Weizman
Alberto Garutti
Jacques Roubaud
Mnemonic hand
2-5pm
Dimitar Sasselov
Cosmic memory
Alice Rawsthorn
Design and memory
Richard Hollis
Notes on memory, mainly visual
Gilbert & George
Brussels alphabet
Fumihiko Maki
Memory in architecture
Amos Gitai in conversation with Jacques Herzog and Pierre de Meuron
China Miéville and Evan Calder Williams
Salvagepunk, Yet Again Redux, Reduced, Rubble.
5-9pm
Isabel Lewis
Mountain grass, mountain hare: bodily imprinting and social dances
Cally Spooner
Ragnar Kjartansson
Smoke
Dara Birnbaum
Reverie: as an illusion of memory
Lutz Bacher
Puck, 2012
Timothy Taylor, Cairn Raider, Krysztina Tautendorfer, with collaborators,
A portrait of Giulio Camillo
Ed Atkins
DEPRESSION
Brian Dillon and Jeremy Millar
Adam Curtis
Douglas Gordon
Winnie Cott
Each fish is a pond full of fishes, as for the tree, it is also a forest
And participations by
Ida Applebroog
What is lovely never dies, 2012
Geta Bratescu
Olivier Castel
Alison Crawshaw
Alice Herz-Sommer filmed by Ron Arad and Hans Ulrich Obrist
Jasper Morrison
Adrian Piper
Ai Weiwei
See more Marathons
Jacques Roubaud
Main Mnemonique (Mnemonic Hand) (detail)
© Jacques Roubaud
Serpentine Gallery Garden Marathon 2011
Photograph: Federico Martelli
Slogans for the Early 21st Century
Douglas Coupland
2012
Installation photo at the Daniel Faria Gallery, Toronto, September, 2012
Photo credit: Jennifer Rose Sciarrino
Courtesy of the Daniel Faria Gallery
David Lynch
Photograph: Adam Bordow
© Luc Steels
