The Impossibility of Sustaining a Momentum

Exhibited at:

Zugzwang, Fons Welters Gallery Playstation, Amsterdam (NL), 2004 | The Fourth Dimension, Instituto de Visión, Bogota (CO) 2015

Installation view from The Fourth Dimension at Instituto de Visión. 4 out of 80 photos

When my house got tagged I took to the streets of Amsterdam, armed with a camera, looking for signs of the perpetrator. I had no luck with my endeavour but a tag that stuck out was “AGAIN”, which resulted in the slide piece The Impossibility of Sustaining a Momentum. Finding the tag in unexpected places resonated with my interest in scientific memory research.

Text from Zugzwang press release:

“The work of Magnus Monfeldt is usually based on personal histories, and examines the mechanisms of memory and interpretation […] The Impossibility of Sustaining a Momentum by Magnus Monfeldt uses the possibilities of graffiti. The work, a slide projection show of 80 different tags by Amsterdam graffiti artist Again, examines the mechanism of repetition as strategy behind the coding of our city streets. Monfeldt shows the series as a kind of memory, that changes in nuance over time.” (Xander Karskens)