Passing
Olivia Sasse
“Once, two Rumanians were sleeping next to me. One was a historian, the other a cutler. The latter ended our conversation by saying: ‘humanity doesn’t want to be saved.’ I feel ridiculously certain. I’m standing in the streets and look at the people passing by. Memory has temporarily pulled me out of the here-and-now.”
Olivia Sasse examines the interaction between photography and memory. She observes her own perception of the cities and places she visits, which are strange to her, and its inhabitants, who’s language she doesn’t understand. The physical, geographical journey provides a platform for a journey inward. The foreign place triggers associations and memories, which would have otherwise remained concealed.
Sasse communicates her narrative by means of two media, a linear book and a series of short videos. The photographic record of the physical journey, interrupted by fragmentary texts, is the subject matter of the book. The series of short videos serves as an idiosyncratic non-linear archive of unsorted memories. The book provides the interface between the tangible world of the photographs on its pages to a fleeting world of memories, accessible through QR-codes.
Thus, Olivia Sasse poetically explores the workings of one’s own subjective perception, questioning how and where the borderlines between reality and imagination, fact and fiction can be drawn.
