The video shows a route leading through a labyrinth of rooms. In the rooms post cards are placed, which act as doors to new spaces. The camera zooms in on one of them, and on zooming back out it becomes visible in the space that is filmed – a space in which the next postcard is on display, and so on. The rooms themselves are in no logical order. The cards represent doorways to other spaces in the memory, the writings on them being read out with varying degrees of clarity. They too submerge in the stream of fuzziness or become displaced by other memories.
The photographs on the postcards were taken in a house in Munich/Germany which was about to be demolished. The former inhabitants had left some things inside.
29 persons from all over the world were asked to choose a postcard which arouses personal memories and to write it to a person of their choice. Many cards were written to dear persons which had already died, to former lovers, to persons from the time of childhood. The postcards were all sent to the house. The letterbox was prepared with the name „Driftwood“. The postcards were placed in the house as if they had been left by the inhabitants too.
Driftwood, viewing copy in low resolution, 15:35 min
I’m alone in a house. It seems familiar - yet unfamiliar.
I walk through its dark rooms. They are dimly lit by faint, flickering lights.
The rooms seem half empty. As soon as I enter, they fill up with things long forgotten.
There are no doors. There are no windows.
Everything I touch in the room opens up into further rooms.
Time’s line winds and whirls in wild loops. I lost my way long ago.
To me, it seems there is no beginning. And no end.
The further I walk, the more rooms open up.
Or were they there all the time?
A never-ending labyrinth that has not one but countless pathways – but no way in and no way out.
I have no idea how I got here. And no idea of what it might be like outside.
Perhaps this house doesn’t even exist.
Perhaps it’s just a figment of my imagination.
Perhaps it’s no more than a piece of wood I cling to as it drifts through the void.
Scraps of memories float by. I try to grasp them. I weave them together into one.
But each time their threads dissolve and slip away.
Birthe Blauth
Driftwood installation view, UNPAINTED 2014