Memento Mori

Abstract

Over the past number of years Kreider + O'Leary have worked on projects in Japan (Video Shakkei), Italy (Gorchakov’s Wish) and Ireland (Eight Rooms). During our visits to each of these locations we have often stopped to engage with places of cultural and spiritual significance including holy wells, cemetaries and burial sites – an act of observation, perhaps contemplation … Memento Mori is a series of word-and-image composites relating to this experience. The images are photographs taken at the following locations: Isola di San Michele (‘Island of the Dead’) in Venice, Italy; Daigh Bhríde (St. Brigid’s Well) in Liscannor, County Clare, Ireland; a burial site in Tenryu-ji (天龍寺) in Ukyo Ward, Kyoto, Japan. The text, some of which is comprised of found materials from the specific locations, is a poetic meditation on death and remembrance. The writing itself engages with a spatial practice of the page inspired by the manuscripts of Emily Dickinson and, in particular, her employment of ‘variants’ – words and phrases outside of the poetic boundary that can be substituted for other words and phrases in the body of the poem.