Topology of Homecoming

Topology of Homecoming Imagine walking down a street you grew up on. Describe every detail you see along the way. Just simply visualise it in your mind. At first your walks will last only a few minutes. Then after a week or more you will remember more details and your walks will become longer. Five field recordings part of a new work and memory exercise by artist Stine Marie Jacobsen 2019. Stine Marie Jacobsen visited the Swedish city Tranås in spring 2019 and spoke to adult students from the local Swedish language school about their difficulties in learning to read and write for the first time through a foreign language. Their conversations lead her to invite the students to test an exercise which connects the limited short term memory with long term memory, which can store unlimited amounts of information. By creating a stronger path between short and long term memory, perhaps more and new knowledge will symbolically and dynamically merge with one’s childhood street and culture. Topology of Homecoming introduces the brain more like a tuning system than a memory storage device. Ultimately, fantasy and memory retrieval can be introduced into educational material as a migratory freedom and an attitude to learning - from the participants’ own culture. The project is made in collaboration with students from the language school SFI in Tranås and SFI teacher Anna Gkirmpa, translators Shahira Issa, Reza Nikoo, Abubaker Elnajmi, Frank Bergsten, developed with voice actors Sepideh Khodarahmi, David Gauffin and sound designer Lupo Lubich. The project is commissioned by the art center Kultivera and curator Seher Uysal as part of her Legacy project; an international and intercultural exchange that addresses multilingualism and explores how languages affects culture. Stine Marie Jacobsen is a conceptual artist working on long term participatory & educational projects. With themes such as film, language, violence and law, she creates performative experiments with the aim of finding new perspectives to critically examine topics such as ethics, identity, control and fear. She has a BFA from CalArts, the California Institute of the Arts, L.A. 2007, an MFA from the Royal Danish Academy of Fine Arts 2009 and in 2016 she was certified in conflict resolution and peace building.