Archaeology of Insignificance

“The exhibition contains various attempts and repetitions in narrative, action, and reenactment. It invites viewers to navigate the multiple possibilities of revisiting the past, whether in personal accounts or collective pursuits. Videos, photographs, objects, and writings lure viewers into action and contemplation, while time is prolonged, squeezed, or displaced so that memories can be crystallized or extracted. These actions lead to the re-experiencing or realization of fragments of a time when attention had not yet been fully given, but decades had already passed. It is a reminder of forgottenness, an archaeological search for insignificance.” Chih-Chien Wang

Archaeology of Insignificance brings together, for the first time, three video installations, produced in 2014–15, that Chih-Chien Wang conceived of as a trilogy on the processes of memory. At the Galerie de l’Université de Montréal, Wang creates a dialogue among the narratives featured in the works I Want to Be Reminded, A Helper, and The Act of Forgetting, originally presented, respectively, at EXPRESSION, Les Territoires, and Fonderie Darling. Playing on ruptures and connections, the presentation activates both the characters’ and the viewers’ bodies and subjectivities. This memory of insignificance, which is made and unmade through our gestures, relationships, and emotions, is also transposed into photographic images and into an installation presenting objects and words chosen by Wang, which audiences are invited to appropriate and exchange.