Memory House

Memøry Høuse Art Project

What I mostly remember about the past is a sum of absent encounters, people and things missing; summers, winters, in fact, years melted into a reservoir of images and experiences that are working their way slowly into my future. What I refuse to remember travels along as an indispensable companion to my imagination and my creativity. Understanding this companionship has been one reason for extending my PhD research on the Romanian diaspora in the United Kingdom and collective memory, to build Memøry Høuse. As an art collaboration, Memøry Høuse is searching for a point (or many points) of integrating social memories. Someone recently made me wonder whether this project is a constellation of remembering opportunities. It might possibly be true as not all memories make sense in words. Some are barely perceived in my body, in colour, in sound; or in places and in people. To some extent, my awareness of their existence often frees me from my own enslavement and, as a researcher and writer in this context, the enslavement of the generation I belong to: The Romanian Children of the Decree.

As the Memøry Høuse project evolves, my hope is that these memories will find a place of acknowledgment and, instead of travelling wildly, will begin to settle, find a home, or build their own house on a land that was once foreign but so familiar now.

My gratitude and so many thanks to the artists involved in this collaboration: Amanda Bonney Lowery, Mark Mawer and Andrew Morrison.

More updates will follow as the work continues. The exhibition Memøry Høuse will take place in February 2024.

© Maria Stadnicka, September 2023

Memøry Høuse Art Project

What I mostly remember about the past is a sum of absent encounters, people and things missing; summers, winters, in fact, years melted into a reservoir of images and experiences that are working their way slowly into my future. What I refuse to remember travels along as an indispensable companion to my imagination and my creativity. Understanding this companionship has been one reason for extending my PhD research on the Romanian diaspora in the United Kingdom and collective memory, to build Memøry Høuse. As an art collaboration, Memøry Høuse is searching for a point (or many points) of integrating social memories. Someone recently made me wonder whether this project is a constellation of remembering opportunities. It might possibly be true as not all memories make sense in words. Some are barely perceived in my body, in colour, in sound; or in places and in people. To some extent, my awareness of their existence often frees me from my own enslavement and, as a researcher and writer in this context, the enslavement of the generation I belong to: The Romanian Children of the Decree.

As the Memøry Høuse project evolves, my hope is that these memories will find a place of acknowledgment and, instead of travelling wildly, will begin to settle, find a home, or build their own house on a land that was once foreign but so familiar now.

My gratitude and so many thanks to the artists involved in this collaboration: Amanda Bonney Lowery, Mark Mawer and Andrew Morrison.

More updates will follow as the work continues. The exhibition Memøry Høuse will take place in February 2024.

© Maria Stadnicka, September 2023

Sine Loco

Abstract things. Summer Week.

Photography: © Maria Stadnicka, 2023

Pathology

Photograph © Maria Stadnicka August 2023. River. Traces of Life.

Pathology

In early autumn, mornings begin

with the same letter and most things

go on so suddenly, they strike you

as brutal. You forget names and

places where both,

the self and the other, stood

counting insect bites. The ashes of

summer wakefulness, squeezed between

palms pushing against low skies.   

One is taller, one is happier.

The picture resembles

a clearing dome under which you repeat

daily dressing-undressing then

sort items according to necessities:

to set aside,

to bring together, or

in readiness for the big hibernation.

© Maria Stadnicka, 2023.

Where 

....    I tell the distance that
people’s names are 
shorter than rivers… 
threads 
on the world’s spine 
gliding
to the edge of an abyss 
where all their deeds fall
glass-clear
to no ending
except themselves.


© Maria Stadnicka MMXXIII

The Giving-Up Syndrome 

I thought to post thank-you notes
but so many end up recycled. 
There is no more space in your box. 
People should keep the words 
they send to each other for grey hours 
when things seem fine then 
someone hits you in the face. 
Out of luck. 

Only riverbank meadows have
all the time in the world. 
Their pulse slows to a teardrop
before any changes in weather. 
They turn to cement, to salt 
and root clumps, for winter seeps 
through layers of sunset under 
a glass ceiling. 

Blessed be those looking ahead. 
They see just the edges but sleep 
in the middle of things. They dream 
their children when someone dies 
in the neighbourhood. The funeral 
takes place at an airport. 

Our tree chopping season grows 
heavy with chalk: burial site for
the things we once loved that 
have fallen and broken in to pieces.


© Maria Stadnicka, MMXXIII / Quintilis