“Max - Artists in Résidence an Grundschulen”, Foundation Brandenburger Tor - one-year artist residency in the school am Blumenviertel in Berlin - participative project the Library of Childhood memories with the children and their parents, 2018-2019 - 

Our childhood memories are the deepest of all, as they feed and grow our personal construction as well as biding us to our surrounding.

Proust’s madeleine projects our thoughts to the familiar smell of our grandmother’s soup, the Walter Benjamin’s butterfly hunt refers to these forest afternoons with our parents and our teddy - so special and personal - which makes me think of my very own, as special and personal.

Taken individually, these memories spark emotion to those to whom they belong to and also to the ones they are shared with.

Explored collectively, our memories trigger thoughts: they question one on what does one eat, how does one move, how does one play? What is one’s relationship with nature, with other people and with one’s surrounding? How does one deals with love, oblivion or loss? What does affect one and what’s important in one’s life?

So many subjects that are raised through our childhood memories, even though they can seem so common; however, when actually considered through a shared emotion, they gather precious testimonies of our contemporary history.

This is why I decided to work with students from the Grundschule am Blumenviertel school, within the « Max Artists in Résidence an Grundschulen » program, from the Branderburg Gate, in order to create a “childhood memories library”.

With a set up goal of collecting, preserve and share childhood memories from different generations, this library defines itself as an intergenerational, experimental and inclusive project, at the very heart of what a teaching school represents, that allows children to explore and question their own memories, as well as their parents’ ones.

Stories, drawings and objects feature this library, which is being created across the entire academic year.

Library of childhood memories

And time goes by, Indian ink and stamp on Chinese paper, 28*53 cm, 2020 - 10 drawings - 

Realised with Indian ink and stamp on a Chinese rice paper, this series of drawings show us the passage of time, from the artists’ birth until now.

And time goes by

“Thousand and one visages - Auschwitz 1942-44″, 1001 handprints with aceton - work in progress (use of the archives “Archives générales du Royaume de Belgique. Dossiers individuels d'étrangers.”) - (credit: E. Landesmann)
Supported by the Fondation Auschwitz - ASBL Mémoire d'Auschwitz 

With the goal to move beyond the abstract nature of numbers to give the victims back their humanity, and to question the place of the individual in history, Thousand and one visages will feature a thousand and one faces of the 1.1 million people killed at Auschwitz. These faces will come from photos taken prior to deportation and printed manually with acetone on tissue papers. Texts portraying living conditions in the camps will also be offered for reading, leaving the viewers to decide on the links they will make between these faces and the genocide.

Thousand and one visages - Auschwitz 1942-44

He will forget, charcoal, thread and collage on paper, 42*59.4 cm, 2019 - 9 drawings

The drawings of the series He will forget uncover the intimacy a mother shares with her newborn child, as seen through the artist’s eyes and her life as a mother. They are an attempt to keep the memories of those moments alive as well as an evidence of their inevitable loss.


He will forget

Absence, Indian ink and thread on Chinese paper, 29.7 * 42 cm, 2019 - 11 drawings

The drawings in the Absence series show us empty spaces, reminiscent of the traces left by a photo or a frame that has been removed from a wall. Made on a very fine Chinese paper, they’re creased with water and Indian ink. They thus seem to float in space, reminding us that time erases what ceases to exist and withers what remains.

Absence

Moments, acetone hand prints and thread on paper, 21*29,7 cm, 2019 – 14 pieces - 10 copies per piece

The series Moments presents us with manual impressions using acetone, made with photos found by the artist in car boot sales or with her family photos. It allows us to see moments spent with people we don’t know. Moments which resonate with our own experience.

Moments

Women line, acetone, gold thread, charcoal and wholes on paper, 42*59.4 cm, 2019 - 8 drawings

Women line draws the portrait of 8 women: my great- grandmothers, my grandmothers, my mother and myself.

Combining techniques of manual acetone impression, paper sewing and charcoal drawings, this project pays tribute to all of these women who I do not share my name with, but embody the line to which I belong to. 

An homage to the ones thanks to who I was able to, myself, become a daughter, a woman and a mother. To the ones that I was maybe not able to meet and to the ones for whom faces became blurred. 
For each portrait there is a lead, sewn and to be sown, for which memory is drawn and for our future lives.

Women line

« Class photograph », photograph from an history book about the Berlin’s neighborhood Neukölln from 1901, acetone, linocut, thread, carbon paper and wholes on Chinese paper 30 g, 24,3*33,3 cm, 2016 - 12 pieces, 5 copies for each

Made from a class photo from 1901 and taken from a book on the history of the neighborhood where I live in Berlin, “Class photograph” focuses on the disappearance of these students as individuals and on their preservation as historic items. All these students are dead and nothing in this photo specifies who they were, except a face, an anecdotal expression, a typical garment. We can look at them one by one, taking the time to do so, but in the end all we see is a group, an era, a slice of history.

Because it presents individuals in a context that is familiar to us - the childhood class photo - this picture also reminds us of our own class photos, those of our parents, those of our children. These anonymous individuals have a small place in history. As individuals, they echo our own history.

By depicting the time that passed over them - which erases and covers, which entangles, making it almost unreadable - I also depict time as it passes over us.

Class photograph

Archive of childhood memories, 12 boxes and display cabinet with photos, objects and drawings realized by the children of 12 classes from Normandy, 3-weeks long workshop-residency, La Source, La Guéroulde, 2016

Organized by the French Arts Association La Source within its program « An artist and his/her medium », the Archive of childhood memories offered around 300 children to build up an archive of childhood’s memories. Made of drawings, photographs and objects, this archive was created with different techniques (charcoal, lino prints, sewing, collage…) and different papers (drawing paper, silk paper, tracing paper, manila paper…).

Gathered together in boxes, those memories consist of a delicate and sensitive archive of childhood’s memories which echo the own spectator’s memories and can be viewed as an archive of our contemporary history.

This workshop lasted 4 hours per class and was proposed to around 300 children from 12 different classes in Normandy during November and December 2016.

Archive of childhood memories

To see on www.histoiresdepatrimoine.com
Participative project during my 6 weeks long art residency at Le Point Commun in Annecy (Fr), 2017

Heritage stories is a project I developed during my 6 weeks long art residency at Le Point Commun in Annecy (Fr). It offers us to (re)discover the heritage of Annecy through the personal stories and memories of those who see and live there daily: its inhabitants.

Based on the idea that the heritage can only be a community property because everyone carries a share of its memories and its transmission, Heritage stories invited several generations of inhabitants to share a personal story, a memory or an anecdote related to well-known places in Annecy.

The miraculous fishings at the River Thiou, the plays on swings on le Pâquier - Champ de Mars of Annecy, the conversations among friends sitting on the Annecy beach, and the winding paths to reach the castle… all are personal memories which give us the opportunity to see the Annecy’s heritage in a different way.

Funny, innocuous or deeply lasting, 50 memories told by inhabitants from 7 to 95 years old were collected. They often resonate with our own stories, those of our parents and grand-parents, those of our children. That’s probably why they touch us so deeply. Finally, beyond Annecy’s heritage, Heritage stories talks about life stories and shared memories.

More information on www.histoiresdepatrimoine.com

Heritage stories

The ArtMe Collection can be seen on www.archiveofmemories.org

”Archive of memories”- participative project to see on www.archiveofmemories.org - by Kai Becker, Barbara Cousin, Amandine Descamps and Livia Noll, began in 2016

« The passage of time leaves us remains which pile up: photographs, drawings, felt-tip pens already dried up for a long time, shirts, returnable and non-returnable glasses, empty cigar cases, boxes, rubbers, postcards, books, dust and trinkets: that’s what I call my fortune. », Georges Perec, Species of Spaces

Developed by the photographers Kai Becker and Livia Noll, the artist Barbara Cousin and the architect Amandine Descamps, The ARtME Collection gathers personal objects from different generations of people who exchanged them for art with the artists. The watch that belonged to the grand-mother. The doll from childhood. The first photograph taken with the loved one… all personal objects that are precious testimonies of our contemporary way of living and remembering.

Already more than 50 objects and 50 personal stories to discover on www.archiveofmemories.org.
A project to be continued…

The ArtMe Collection

“Childhood Memories”, photographs, acetone, thread and woodcut on silk paper and watercolor paper 300g, 21*29.7 cm, 2016 – series of 12 drawings

This series – which is realized with pictures of my childhood – focuses on our childhood memories and an attempt to preserve them. Printed with acetone on silk paper, these pictures are torn, blurred, and quite invisible.
With patience I gather them, I resew them. With patience I try to remember.
These pictures are kept, magnified, as placed under a glass. Yet they will remain blurred and will gradually become totally invisible as we can already guess with the black square – acting as an authorization given to the oblivion. 


Childhood Memories

« Burned matches », 306.000 burned matches, varying sizes, 2016 - project of an installation for the Commemoration of the Centenary of the Battle in Verdun

--> Created for the Commemoration of the Centenary of the Battle in Verdun, this installation remains currently at the project stage. A prototype has already been set up (with 25.000 matches) and I’m looking for a place to create the whole installation in situ.


Made of 306.000 burned matches, « Burned matches » refers to the 306.000 French and German soldiers who were killed or disappeared during the Battle of Verdun in 1916, one of the deadliest in history.

While we haven’t experienced that battle directly, or met those who died there, this installation invites us to reflect on what form - a hundred years later - the duty of memory may take, and more generally on our role in the transmission of memory.

The shape, organization and dimensions of this installation remind us of military cemeteries, the fields of ruins and ashes, but also of the fields of culture, symbols of a memory to maintain. From afar, the installation consists of an imposing black mass, stretching off into the distance as far as the eye can see. Up close, it is made of fragile burnt matches, scattered across the floor in hundreds of piles among which the visitor moves.

The more visitors move within the installation, the more it will change: piles will tend to flatten out, matches to be reduced to ashes, and ashes to scatter. While the installation as such will disappear, visitors will take some ash with them - on their shoes, clothes and skin - just like they carry part of the collective memory.

This project recieved the “Centenary” Label of the First World War Centenary Partnership (www.centenaire.org)

Burned matches

“Family sheets”, photographs, acetone and woodcut on family sheets and tissues, several sizes, 2016 

Through this series of ten pieces, I ask myself about what we keep from our ancestors, between reminiscence and oblivion. 

On sheets and family fabric, I print photos found in garage sales. Using acetone printing technique, I make those photos evanescent images, rendered almost illegible by black and deep masses that I etch on tissues.

Family sheets

« Lives », found books and photographs, paper, charcoal, black ink, rope, 2015

Made up of pictures and books that were found, this installation offers us to meditate at written lives but that we cannot read anymore, lives that show life and remind us of death.

Lives

« How was Werner Liese ? », Indian ink and charcoal on former grade sheets belonging to a certain Werner Liese from the 1920’, ca. 21*33 cm, 2015 – 11 drawings

By creating portraits of young boys on old former grade sheets belonging to a certain Werner Liese from the 1920', I try to reappropriate these personal archives. I am interested here both in the emotional linked to these archives and the importance of the story and the imagination in memories.


How was Werner Liese?

"Dust Landscapes”, book drawing made with remains of charcoal, bound by hand, 15 pages, ca. 10*15 cm, glove – 15 pieces, 2015

Made out of remnants of my work (leaves arranged in my studio, and on which charcoal powder is randomly deposited), these notebooks are a trace, a memory. 
Like some archives, they are fragile, perhaps even doomed to disappear. In fact, charcoal powder can be fixed onto the paper only partially: the more these notebooks are seen and manipulated, the more these charcoal traces will fade, leaving a vague, blurred and dusty image of these landscapes.

Dust Landscapes

“I remember that meal”, found photographs and mount, tip-pen, 13*18 cm, 2015 (13 pieces)

In this series, I'm interested in the way our memory changes past events. Focusing on the idea that creating a picture in black and white makes it more realistic, I painted some parts of old photos with bright childish felt pens. The interval and rendering of these photos invite us to invent stories, as we have done by looking at the pictures hung on the walls of our ancestors.

I remember that meal

“The delicate rot”, mixed technique (Indian ink, charcoal, pen, marble powder, water and collage) (50g and 300g), 18*24 cm, 2015 (11 drawings)

“The delicate rot” presents decomposing fruits. Made in two parts, these drawings focus on permeability, substance, transparency. I first worked with different materials on a thick sheet of paper and then put a very thin sheet of paper on this drawing, creased earlier with the help of a flatiron. This paper then absorbs the still damp materials of the drawing, acting like skin, permeable and withered.


The delicate rot

“I look at them”, installation (photos, thread, box), 2015

I look at them
pleasures, parents, strolls,
laughter, meals,
memories.
I contemplate them
and life happens.

I look at them

”My little pieces of paper”, silk paper, Indian ink, needle, 190*130 cm (222 pieces), 2015
My little pieces of paper
One by one, I look at them, I make them mine.
It's a bit like when my mother told me about my memories.
One by one, I organize and pin them
It's a bit like when my grandmother kept her butterflies.

Picture: Büro für alles

My little pieces of paper

”What remains?”, photographs, sewing thread, tarlatan rag, paper towel, etching on Thai paper, three-part work (each piece: 20*26 cm), 2015

An old photo that we preserve, that we protect, that we resew.
An old photo that unravels and disappears.
An old photo of a memory that no longer exists.

Photos: Büro für alles (buerofueralles.de)

What remains?

“Memories on paper”, etching, charcoal, pen, thread and holes on Chinese paper, 24.3*33.3 cm, 2015 – 6 drawings

My memories on paper
marks, traces, holes.


Memories on paper

"Deeply rooted memories", Indian ink, paper towel and sewing thread, 9 pieces (85*200 cm), 2014

Our remains,
in the head, in the guts,
the tail of my dress, the tree of California, my mother’s breast,
like algae in the pond deep in the back yard.


Photos: Büro für alles (buerofueralles.de)


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Barbara Cousin