This project is an archive of oblivion. We created an open call inviting people to donate us photographs where they have erased someone from the image as a means to forget them or a moment in their history. This process is called vaporization and once someone is vaporized they become an Unperson, a term created by George Orwell in 1984. We focus on exploring the value of the photograph as a medium in which inflicted attempts of oblivion are perpetrated and how those blank spaces, burnt marks, cut out faces or scratched off ink taking the place of someone only insist on the presence of the ones who went from apotheosis to damnatio memoriae.
Control plays a predominant role in this project. Beginning with effacing the frustrated desire to control their memories, the participants shift that desire of forgetting someone and project it to the object that contains their image, inflicting their control over a photograph. Once they decide to donate it to the project, the control of the photographic object is passed on to us, the guardians of the archive. Therefore the intentions behind the materiality of the object change, The Unperson Project takes control: We catalogue them, organize or disorganize them, decide their place in the archive. In addition, we take the photographs out of context, they now have the potential to morph and adapt to new forms of exposure. Their material forms will now create different experiences from the original intentions and by making them public, we make them accessible hence losing control over them.
For participations please write us en email to theunpersonproject@gmail.com
The Unperson Project is created by artists Andrea Tejeda and Susana Moyaho .
Tumblr
Der Greif
HojaSanta magazine
Revista Chilango
Sugar & Spice
Crítico Juan Solis habla sobre The Unperson Project
El Siglo de Durango