Memory Palace at the V&A

If it is true that a picture tells a thousand words, then the V&A’s new exhibition should be able to tell Hari Kunzru’s story, “Memory Palace,” twice. This ambitious show aims to bring to life Kunzru’s 10,000 word story with 20 multi-dimensional pieces from graphic designers, typographers and illustrators.

Kunzru’s story, which was written specially for this exhibition, presents a dystopian vision of the future. A magnetic storm has destroyed much of our data, throwing us into an age called The Withering. Meanwhile a ruling elite named The Thing is trying to bring about The Wilding—an idealised union with nature—by destroying all remaining information and the art of remembering.

Kunzru’s protagonist has joined the Memorialists, a sect who are trying to retain as much information as possible about the past. The protagonist has been jailed for retaining a piece of the Periodic Table or “Great Table of Elements” which has been made into a physical object. The protagonist starts to construct a memory palace inside his own mind in order to remember past services such as hospitals and museums.

Memory palaces are a Classical mnemonic device in which ideas that need to be remembered are associated with specific physical locations. Kunzru’s protagonist makes a memory palace out of his cell: “I gave each spot a meaning, and as I populated it with the things I have been given to remember, the cell began to grow.”

Representing Kunzru’s complex story with only 20 installations might seem like an impossible task. To ease the difficulty, the exhibition begins with a wall of rust coloured letters spelling out a synopsis of the story, complete with a glossary reminiscent of George Orwell’s in Nineteen Eighty-Four. “The Thing” mirrors “Big Brother,” “the Memorialists” “the Brotherhood” and so on. Whether this is cheating or not, it certainly makes everything much easier to follow.

Words are pivotal to this exhibition. Tantalising extracts from Kunzru’s story accompany each installation. The curators of the exhibition, Laurie Britton Newell and Ligaya Salazar, commented that the text is the “static core” of the exhibition. The 20 installations enable the text to be brought to life in a way that merely displaying the text cannot.

The real question, however, is whether the installations successfully tell the story. When I spoke to Kunzru he was diplomatic, telling me that he knew the story too well to make that judgement. But he did add that artists will have their own interpretations of the text which differ from what he originally had in mind. He said the exhibition was intended to give “an impression of a world and an atmosphere” rather than to recreate his story.

Taking that definition, the exhibition gives a wonderful flavour of Kunzru’s work. The first part is devoted to the protagonist’s past, the destruction of technology and the ruins that remain. Némo Tral’s installation (left) depicting the Olympic Park and iconic London buildings in ruins is horrific in its starkness. Kunzru’s accompanying words—“my fellow Londoners, can’t you see how we’re diminished”—give the piece further resonance.

The second part of the exhibition evokes the protagonist’s imprisonment and interrogation. Fittingly the relevant pieces are displayed in a narrow corridor, linking the past and the apocalyptic magnetic storm to the third part of the exhibition, the memory palace. Dominating this section is Frank Laws’s incredible cell situated at the entrance of the corridor. The structure is composed of five walls with narrow gaps in between which the protagonist’s memories of London buildings can be partially viewed. It conveys the claustrophobia of the cell as well as the Memorialists’ inability to fully remember The Booming, the past golden age, evinced by the difficulty of viewing the images of London buildings in full.

The third part of the exhibition is the largest. Without doubt the most eye-catching installation is Le Gun’s extraordinary medicine cart, pulled by urban foxes (see top image and left). This is an insight into the memory palace of the protagonist who has been tasked, by the Memorialists, to remember hospitals amongst other services. The installation is a striking mishmash of cultures. The cart is a Roman chariot, driven by a tribal Shaman, advertising J.Kyle’s (Jeremy Kyle’s) cures for spiritual sickness. It so vividly represents the misremembering that Kunzru describes throughout his story while also symbolising the fusion of cultures that make up London.

The exhibition ends with Johnny Kelly’s installation, which permits viewers to draw their own memories which will become part of a memory bank. The idea is that the viewers can create a collective memory palace that will retain their impressions of the exhibition long after it has been dismantled.

Nevertheless this is not a true memory palace as created by the protagonist. There is no encouragement for the audience to create their own memory palaces. Kunzru himself told me that he hasn’t attempted to create a memory palace and that there is a school of thought which suggests that memory palaces are an impossibility. Grandiose classical stories of orators who have stored 100,000 words in their minds by utilising memory palaces may just be stories.

This is a startling revelation given that the exhibition is entitled “Memory Palace.” If memory palaces don’t exist then the protagonist’s mental rebellion against The Thing, by storing memory in his mind, is plainly not possible. Probably a good idea therefore that the Sky Arts’ memory palace can be saved to a hard drive.

Sky Arts Ignition: Memory Palace runs at the V&A from 18th June-20th October Memory Palace by Hari Kunzru is published in June 2013 (V&A Publishing, hardback £12.99, e-book £11.99) An accompanying programme featuring the exhibition will be broadcast on Sky Arts 1 HD on 19 June.www.vam.ac.uk