My Grandparents
Memories of our grandparents are above all childhood memories of old people. Yet, what do we really know about the days when our grandparents were young? They are our most personal link to a past we only know from films and books – but how did our grandparents live and love in these days? And what is left of it now?
With his latest long term project MY GRANDPARENTS | MEMORY BUREAU Mats Staub pursues these ques- tions by asking generations of grandchildren to join him for a talk. At every venue the Memory Bureau is a place of both production and reception: on one side conversations take place, are recorded, cut and trans- ferred to iPods – on the other side each visitor can move freely through the growing collection of stored and incomplete memories; he gets a glimps of other people’s life stories and at the same time retraces his own grandparent’s story.
After the initial first stops in the German speaking part of Switzerland (Theaterfestival Auawirleben Bern, Zürcher Theater Spektakel, Theater Basel), this long term project aims to spread beyond country and lan- guage borders and go to Austria (Wiener Festwochen), Germany (Festival Theaterformen Hannover) and the French speaking part of Switzerland during the 2009/10 season.
MY GRANDPARENTS | MEMORY BUREAU enquires about the grandchildren’s perspective and evoques per- sonal questions about social background, oral tradition, remembering and forgetting, about the relationship between family story and world history, about stories and the so called truth.
Meine Grosseltern | Erinnerungsbüro wird gefördert durch die Schweizer Kulturstiftung Pro Helvetia, durch das Migros-Kulturprozent und durch L’arc – Littérature et atelier de réflexion contemporaine.