Memory Marathon was exhibited as a looped video projection, accompanied by a rolling slideshow of digital portraits of featured participants displayed on a number of plasma screens.
Nearest Tube: Liverpool Street
www.trumanbrewery.com
6. February 2010
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Simon Pope’s interest in walking pervades much of his artistic output. Often describing an encounter with a particular landscape, his pieces also invite a dialogue with other people: either in the negotiation of the route itself, or in the exchange of other forms of shared experience. Acts of memory are a pivotal feature of this process, involving either the retracing of a journey or the recollection of an object or image that artist and participant have both seen previously.
This project is the second collaboration between Film and Video Umbrella and Pope, following 2007’s ‘The Memorial Walks’.
Pope (born in Exeter, UK, 1966) has exhibited internationally,including Laboral, Gijon, Asturias; Chapter, Cardiff; New Museum, New York; Museum of Contemporary Art, Istanbul.
He represented Wales at the Venice Biennale in 2003. Recent shows include ‘A Common Third’ at Danielle Arnaud, London and ‘Carved from Memory’ at Spacex, Exeter.
6. February 2010
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The various 400-metre stretches of the marathon route (104 in total) were filled with an extraordinarily diverse array of people.
With an age-range of 8 to 82, the participants reflected the equally distinctive mix of communities and nationalities that characterise this part of East London. The project was open to all residents of the five host boroughs who had an Olympic or Paralympic memory that they wanted to share.
Participants were enlisted through local advertising and an outreach programme involving community groups.
6. February 2010
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Memory Marathon is an 80-minute film of a large-scale participative event in which artist Simon Pope walked a specially planned 26-mile marathon route through the five London boroughs that will host the 2012 Olympic and Paralympic Games. Continuing a series of trademark walking and memory projects by this innovative artist, Memory Marathon is a unique collective undertaking that celebrates the enduring importance of personal memories.
Starting out just after dawn from Thamesmead in South-East London, and arriving twelve hours later at the entrance to the Olympic Park in Stratford, Pope completed his marathon journey in the company of more than a hundred local residents of Greenwich, Newham, Tower Hamlets, Hackney and Waltham Forest.
Moving forward in an unbroken relay, in which each participant walked a 400-metre section of the route alongside Pope, each individual was asked to contribute a recollection of what is, for them, a stand-out moment from Olympic history, before passing the ‘baton’ of the microphone to the next person in line. Recruited from the East London boroughs adjoining the Olympic Park site, and reflecting the diverse make-up of those communities and the inclusive, international spirit of the Games themselves, the participants’ collective act of commemoration draws from a huge reservoir of sporting and cultural memory, encompassing both triumph and disaster, and highlighting both the intimate and the everyday.
6. February 2010
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Memory Marathon was shown at three East London cinemas over the weekend of 6/7 March 2010.
Each screening was followed by an in-conversation between the artist Simon Pope and a writer or critic.© 2010 Memory Marathon. Powered by Wordpress.
6. February 2010
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