Noemi Niederhauser & Hélène Combal-Weiss – Chabah Yelmani Gallery, Brussels

Amnesia decides is made by a duo: Noemi Niederhauser & Hélène Combal-Weiss.
With on one side, a mix media based practice concerned with archiving and the interpretation/ misinterpretation of artifacts, and on the other side an exploration of experimental materials and video in the design process. They meet in the creation
of disruptive narratives by choreographing the making and the meaning in hybrid ways.

Amnesia decides interrogates the place of artifacts as discourses of knowledge and cultural value. It analyzes how the appropriation and will to understand cultural elements that do not belong to one’s own society or time necessarily leads to inaccuracy, misconception or speculation. Instead of thinking of those notions as hindering aspects which should be avoided, the duo allows these to become the intrinsic subjects of Amnesia decides.

My brother is a green parrot, chapter I of: Amnesia decides has been initiated during a residency at the Victoria & Albert Museum in London. This chapter is focusing on a textile piece from the museum’s collection. The cloth, registered as number 854-1901, has been attributed different origins throughout time and historical analysis.

My Brother is a green parrot, shows with no compromise or dissimulation an episode known as the Woven Identities Ceremony, where the duality of the cloth’s origins is performed by a group of individuals and flows into a series of costumes, objects and spaces.

Here are born new understandings, new hypothesis, new reading strata.
Here resonate speculated songs and whispers, possible gestures and uncertified exchanges. Here is threatened and corrupted the when and where from.
And so, surrounded by mumbles, ceremony after ceremony, new customs take shape and establish themselves.

Does a narrative not only hold as long as their is confidence in the voice speaking, confidence in it telling a kind of truth, an existing reality, confidence in its power?