Irina Polin | Give back my things! | 26 May — 30 June 2009

White muslin curtains, Marlene Dietrich eyelashes, sacred shop windows, happy 50-s, the final shot of a movie followed by “the end” or “fin”.

Some soviet cupboard of the Second World War period becoming a german bar stand in a famous Shtirlets movie. The world of russian classic literature, passages of life lived through, from-the-beach souvenirs, holiday flings, Great October and Great Patriotic War Victory (WW2) annual celebration gifts.

All this has gone with the past, only a blur left in a world of a dream or death ,where all the dead things wish to be alive, they sort themselves out in a line, stack ,lay out different shapes desperately trying to remind of life, calling out, sending signs.

Pretty much like the Archimbold’s librarian, the one who is about to dissolve in the dust of his books, as a Smat’s card house from
“The report of the drowned“.

The one “playing card castles at dawn” game has 52 playing cards to put together in some place where there’s no draft to ruin them.
The player can preset his dreams for the next night, in case he wakes up before his castle goes down.

Those wishing to dream about love start building from the 7 of hearts.

Old things in an old home, in an old life. Fragility of porcelain figurines, glass, last season dry leaves. Fragility of the restored constructions and fragility of the memories. The overtaking power of misery and envying those who have managed to live all this through and forget. Fragility of the safe- from — all- evil innocent doll house. Fragility of it’s invisible hostess.

Memories are to vanish as soon as things are gone, same as the wiped off them dust. But things last, thus recalling all now forgotten, which they once contained, sustained and witnessed.

Oh yes, it is all frozen now , as in mysterious rosebud of Charles Foster Kane, as in Casper Houser’s impervious mind. But inside the doll houses little plastic creatures keep playing their dangerous and serious games. Barbie world overrules the reality, everything is essential in it, all for real. Much more important than it tends to be in actual life.

Real sorrow and joy, ecstasy and death, love and hate, anguish and thrill — all this lives in those stupid little trinkets. Live sensible emotions, vibrating genuine feelings in the still life. Things are washed, mended and sealed into eternity — eternity closely attached to objects, material, non existing other than in reminiscences invoked by things.

There is this inner mystery of the terminated past, which is now being painstakingly restored. This is a trace, a little piece of island managed to survive in the midst of a world lost into abyss.

There is this girl, she just sits on it, distributing her dolls among the shop windows, fitting them into their houses as if nothing ever happened.

Frozen memories — once you drive, sail or fly away from those — you do it for good. This is the horror of Jules Superviel underwater world as well as the whole empire of feelings and emotions hopelessly blocked within my mind. This is a grueling remembrance of how it used to be, high pitched sensation of the past being present here and now.

“Je ne peux pas me voir, mais je le sens comme si je le faisais maintenant”, — Natalie Sarrot writes in her novel “Childhood”.

Nein, das tust du nicht. Non, tu ne feras pas ca. Ces paroles viennent d’une forme que le temps a presque efface il ne reste qu’une presence celle d’une jeune femme assise au fond d’un fauteuil dans le salon d’un hotel ou mon pere passait seul avec moi ses vacances, en Suisse, a Interlaken ou a Beatenberg, je devais avoir cinq ou six ans. Et la jeune femme etait charge de s’occuper de moi et de m’apprendre l’allemand Je la distingue mal mais je vois distinctement la corbeille a ouvrage posee sur ses genoux et sur le dessus une paire de grands ciseau d’acier.

No, you are not going to do this. These words are delivered in the shape and form almost erased by time, there’s only the presence left, presence of a young woman, sitting in an armchair in a hotel lobby where my father alone used to spend holidays with me , in Switzerland, Interlaken or Beaten berg, I was about 5 or 6 at that time. Young lady was supposed to look after me and teach me German. I remember her very poorly, but I can picture a basket with needlework on her knees quite clearly, as well as the big steel scissors.

The world seen without people is on those photographs. This is a genuine world of objects — not people. Those are no longer our things nor things for us — those are things on their own. Things have placed themselves into showcases, trying to get abstracted from the personalities they used to be surrounded by, showing memories per se, all by themselves. An inevitable byproduct of being, with it’s exhausting ability to question “the being in general”, miserable. Dasein, built on the almighty of the mind, — here turns out to be the power of things squashing a man.

All those things are recognizable, are to be found in every home. Take for instance this boy with the dog, I’ve broken it’s hand off, mom didn’t allow me to take it off the television set, but nevertheless I did , and of course it fell down. I were gathering those leaves when we took a walk in Alexandrovskiy park, and he told me he loved me and left right after that. It was the time when “Il a suffi d’un geste, d’un mot caressant de maman”