Memory Capital

Realized: 28.08.2025–04.01.2026 Certain Future Evidence, PinchukArtCentre, Kyiv, Ukraine

performative / interactive installation

Open Group — Yuriy Biley, Pavlo Kovach, Anton Varga

The project is an attempt to create another ‘open situation’ — an activity in which the process and experience of the participants become equal elements in the work. At the center of the project is a paradoxical procedure: evaluating and selecting others’ memories, carried out according to clearly defined rules, in an atmosphere of overt bureaucracy. This deliberate juxtaposition confronts that which is unstable, personal and ephemeral memory with the cool logic of formal structures, such as an archive, an institution or an office.

Memories are treated like capital: a material trace of an individual’s presence in time and history. According to materialist theories of history, as long as we are mortal, man’s ultimate capital remains time, and memories go hand in hand with it as the ‘profit’. This project therefore proposes to look at memory not only as an emotional resource, but as a commodity subject to social exchange, negotiation and sometimes rejection.

In the small, three-level structure of the office, individuals share their memories, which are then subject to selection by other participants — they are accepted into the ‘history’ of the project (its archive and exhibition space) or rejected as irrelevant, trivial, unnecessary. There is internal tension here: who decides the value of someone else’s experience and on what basis? Can something personal really be unnecessary? How can we distinguish memory from construction, or memory from imagination?

This project puts participants in a situation of open confrontation: between subjective experience and the objectifying evaluation of others. It leads to reflection on who has the right to create history and under what conditions, as well as the value of those micro-histories that do not fit into the official circulation of collective memory.

Text by — Marta Czyż

invitation: We invite you to participate in an Open Group project focused on memory and selective archiving of human experience. Our primary subject of interest is personal memory, regardless of when it occurred or what it relates to.

By deciding to participate in the project, you agree to the following conditions: your memories will be evaluated, and if you do not pass one of the three stages, we will not inform you of the reasons for the rejection. However, if you are rejected, you have the opportunity to try again. Depending on the workload of the office, the full cycle takes 20 to 30 minutes.

If you pass all three stages, your memories will be added to the general memory capital, and you will be offered the opportunity to become one of the memory selectors and join our team.

To get started, go to the selector at the entrance, who will decide whether you can proceed.

Text by — Open Group

VISUAL MEMORY ROOM

instruction: In this space, you will need to choose any photo from your phone that is connected to a memory from your life. We are not interested in the accompanying story — only the image itself will be taken into consideration. Take your time; there is no need to rush. Once you are ready, approach the selectors’ table and show the photo. Depending on the decision of both selectors, you will either be invited to proceed to the next room or asked to leave the office.