Meet The Memory Person
“The Memory Person“ is collector of memories - a figure and also a real role adapted by my fellow collaborators and myself during workshops and curated walks around several cities. The project was conceived in 2022 through an open call for public art to commemorate local cultural practicioners who were forced into exile during the Nazi regime in Munich. To link these historical events with the present, the project bridges past and current experiences of exile and migration in Munich and beyond.
Please visit https://www.memoryperson.com/en for detailed info, newsletter and updates!
The project critically engages with Karl Valentin’s photo collection “Munich Originals”
(“Münchner Originale”). The latter features quirky characters and cultural practitioners
who lived outside bourgeois norms around the turn of the 20th century. A specific point of
reference is the historical “Advertisement Person” (“Reklamemensch”): walking through
his neighborhood, he invited passersby to pin various objects to his clothing. “The Memory
Person“ adopts this public interaction to fill an important gap. While Munich‘s traditional
monuments rarely tell stories of exile and migration, this project transforms fleeting moments
into a growing, community-created counter-monument.
In workshops, “The Memory Person” invites participants to come together and give shape
and expression to personal memories through the creative process. By handing these
mementos over to “The Memory Person,” participants turn them into public contributions
that are presented online in the form of an “Open Archive” and featured during curated city walks. These participatory tours also lead to sites whose histories of migration
and exile are currently invisible within the cityscape, such as former forced labor camp
sites.
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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 spent one month at House of Arts in Ústí nad Labem, Czech Republic. 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 migration and exile movements in the region from the 19th century to the present, expanding my "Meet the Memory Person" project into this new context. The residency included a workshop with students at Jan Evangelista Purkyně University in Ústí nad Labem, a city walk, and my participation in the IDENT exhibition.
For the city walk in December, I teamed up with sound artist Polina Kathsenka and theater enthusiast Jegor Kondratyuk. 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. Jegor Kondratyuk presented the collection of mementos in Czech, while I introduced the historical sites along our walk based on my research in the city archive and museum during my residency.
