Meet The Memory Person
This ongoing project explores local memories of exile and migration—both past and present—through dialogue, archival materials, subculture, and architecture. I invite individuals from various local migrant groups and backgrounds to participate in workshops where they create multimedia objects that bring their memories to life. With the authors’ permission, I incorporate these artworks into curated city walks informed by my research into local histories of exile and migration. During these participatory walks, performers present the artworks and share these local narratives with the audience.
Please visit https://www.memoryperson.com/en for detailed info, newsletter and updates!
From 2022 to 2023, I was an artist-in-residence at the research center Käte Hamburger Kolleg global:disconnect in Munich for six months. I was awarded a commission through an open call by global dis:connect and METROMOD to create a public artwork commemorating the artists, architects, and intellectuals who fled Munich during National Socialism. During my research, I decided to expand the timeframe to the present. My project, “Meet The Memory Person,” premiered as a public art performance in Munich’s Giesing district in 2023. Including 2024, five performers have embodied the public figure of “The Memory Person.” The ongoing project shares and celebrates the memories of creative individuals across generations who have personal and professional connections to exile and migration.
I published open calls within local migrant networks and among Giesing residents to invite them to participate in workshops. Participants created “mementos”—portable multimedia objects that materialize their experiences and memories. During curated city walks, performers introduced historic sites of exile and migration—ranging from former forced labor camps to locations associated with the Gastarbeiter*innen —while engaging with the public to collect new stories and share the memories held within the workshop creations. These artworks are now displayed in a digital Open Archive and an expandable catalog.
Drawing inspiration from Karl Valentin’s “Münchner Originale” and the iconic “Reklamemensch” Hans Held, The Memory Person displays these mementos and poetic dedications in different languages on their clothing. These items serve as visual cues to prompt conversations with passersby and the city walk participants. In return for sharing their own memories, residents received a memento, creating a tangible connection to the project and cultivating a shared history.
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Images 1-21: “Meet The Memory Person – a performative monument”
Image 22: "Reklamemensch" portrait of Hans Held from the photo collection "Münchner Originale" by Karl Valentin, in the book by Karl Stankiewitz, Allitera Verlag, 2019, p. 242.
Image 23: Oktoberfest, “Souvenir Vendor,” Munich, 1907/10. Photo: Philipp Kester. Source: Munich City Archive
Giesing, Munich (DE), 2023 - 2024
Participatory city walk, Multimedia Objects
Duration: 3h
Concept: Franziska Windolf
Curation: Mareike Schwarz (2023)
Workshop participants: Anick Messerschmitt, Eliza Kokeyan, Elvin Turgut, Emver Retzep Oglou, Franziska Windolf with quotes paraphrasing Adnan Al-Dhahir, Haydar Isik, Ivan Binar, Milorad Vujovic, Wladimir Nikolajewitsch Woinowitsch, Hanna Vasina, Iriet Yusuf, Iriet Yusuf and school children, Kathrin Knöpfle, Katja Kushnir, Ksenia Bykovsky, Leonid Hrytsak, Liana Chernetska, Maisoun Alfarawati, Manuel Friedrich, Mariam Monga, Mehmet “Schlosser”, Miriam Worek, Natalia Shynkarova, Nicolas Wannenmacher, Olena Mytko, Pepi, Ping-Pong group , Seb, Selin Julia Sissiyo, smadlmachts, Su Turhan, Viktoriia Ivasyshyna; some, who wish to be anonymous
Workshops: 14.05.23 @ Kulturzentrum Gorod, Munich; 12.11.2023 @ FLORIDA Lothringer 13, Munich; 15.06.24, 22.06.24, 29.06.24, 06.07.24 @ 103er Freizeitreff, Munich-Giesing
Performers City Walks: Franziska Windolf, Konouz Saeed, Lisavieta Bogushevskaya, Simone Kokou, Viviana Iacob
City walks: 01.06.23, 3pm; 04.06.23, 12am; 11.06.23, 3pm; 13.06.23, 4pm; 19.06.23, 5pm; 24.06.23, 12am; 30.07.24, 6pm; 10.08.24, 3pm; 11.08.24, 3pm; 12.08.24, 6pm; 30.08.24, 6pm; 31.08.24, 3pm
Expandable catalogue Meet The Memory Person in German and English language (2023)
Looking to the future with joy by Magdalena Wisniowska (2025)
static Vol. 3 No. 1, S.11 (2024)
gd:c newsletter (2024)
Open Archive
Project Trailer (2024)
Video documentation Giesing (2023)
Kindly supported by BBK Munich and Upper Bavaria (2023), Department of Culture of the State Capital Munich, Migration Council of the State Capital Munich, District Committee 17 Obergiesing - Fasangarten of the State Capital Munich (all 2024). This project has received funding from the European Research Council (ERC) under the European Union's Horizon 2020 research and innovation program (2023). This project was developed within Franziska Windolf’s fellowship at the Käte Hamburger Research Centre global dis:connect and was initiated by the ERC project ‘Relocating Modernism: Global Metropolises, Modern Art and Exile (METROMOD)’ (2023).
Photo credit: Milena Wojhan, Sandra Singh, Leonid Hrytsak
©Franziska Windolf. All rights reserved.
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In 2024, I was awarded a one-month artist residency at the House of Arts in Ústí nad Labem, Czech Republic. For this project, I researched my grandmother’s story of exile in the former Sudetenland, where the city of Aussig (now Ústí nad Labem) is located. I combined this personal history with broader research on movements of exile and migration in the region from the past to the present, expanding my "Meet the Memory Person" project into this new context. The residency culminated in a workshop, a public performance, and the IDENT exhibition (4 December 2024 – 8 March 2025).
I held an artist talk in October and published an open call at the Jan Evangelista Purkyně University in Ústí nad Labem, inviting students with personal connections to exile and migration to participate in a "Meet the Memory Person" workshop. Together, they created “mementos”: portable multimedia objects that materialize their individual experiences and memories.
For the interactive city walk in December, I teamed up with sound artist Polina Kathsenka and theater enthusiast Jegor Kondratyuk. The walk began at the central station and concluded at the House of Arts on the evening of the exhibition opening. As a central element of the performance, I built a lightbox suitcase to serve as a mobile archive for the mementos created during the workshops in Ústí and Munich. Polina Kathsenka explored themes of migration, transportation, and change through five sound compositions, utilizing samples from early 20th-century shellac records to create an intimate connection to the city's bygone soundscapes. During the walk, Jegor Kondratyuk presented the collection of mementos in Czech, while I introduced the historical significance of various sites based on research I carried out in the city archive and museum during my residency.
