In her work M. O. L., Helene Nymann illustrates how the ancient mnemotechnic Method of Loci works. At first, you use the memory of a well-known building and then you place icons associated with the things you want to remember inside the building's spaces. In Nymann's video, a bird guides us into her childhood home, where we in each room face different memory images. The route shows us the beauty of remembering as a counter-reaction to how we externalize information in our digital lives. Since memory is crucial for us to understand everything around us, Nymann shows us in her artworks alternative ways of remembering to see the world in differentiated ways.

 

One of Nymann's primary inspiration sources is astronomer and philosopher Giordano Bruno from the 16th century. He invented a method to remember information through complex memory wheels that connect knowledge in new ways. As a consequence of his new thought patterns, Bruno ended up like Copernicus being able to imagine how the earth was not the center of the universe and that several worlds were possible. These thoughts made him extremely controversial in his time, and he was burned at the stake as a result of these pagan realizations. Thus, by introducing us to various knowledge constellations, such as planets inspired by Kabbalistic astrology, Nymann emphasizes the similarity between mnemonic techniques and our imagination about the world.

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Ida Schyum

cand.mag in art history