Ruinous Recollections: Fellow Wanderers

Ruinous Recollections is an art project established by two Manchester-based curators, Darien Jane Rozentals and Robert Knifton. Taking multiple stories of the city as its start point, it will create works that etch memories into Manchester's urban canvas, re-imagining and adding layers to an already fluid city.


"Behind the visible built environment of the city lurk fictions and memories latent within urban space. The abandoned stories and neglected narratives that echo through the red-brick ruins of post-industrial Manchester represent a drift of deleterious dereliction, a literary psychogeography of the city where spectres of a forgotten past ghost-write their tales onto the decaying urban fabric. Part of Ruinous Recollections is unearthing these stories, and connecting them with contemporary artists, who through their work can elaborate upon the myths of city space"


Their new blog wwww.ruinousrecollections.blogspot.com plans to document the evolution of their work; It's where I found the amazing image above from (apocolypse on newtown street) I’ve encountered them on various wanderings and always come away feeling enriched and with a new story buzzing in my brain. Last time I spoke to Robert he told a tale of philosophers flying kites in Glossop. They listen to the voices in the cracks of the pavement and the echoes round new tower blocks and use them to create something beautiful…..

I’m especially intrigued by Paul Harfleet’s work on Alan Turing. Turing, a founder of modern computing and AI has long been a figure I have found fascinating. I’ve often thought it slightly distasteful his memorial sits in Sackville Park clutching an apple (he committed suicide by eating one laced with cyanide after facing homophobic abuse). Then again I find much about the Canal Street ghetto troubling due its commodification of a certain kind of queer that alienates so many… but that’s another rant…. Anyhow my Dischordian spirit also loves the symbolisim of golden apples, and Harfleet’s Pansy Project is awesome so I’m looking forward to this work very much.

Incidentally prizes await anyone who finds a golden apple The LRM have secreted somewhere in fair mancunia.... Hail Eris! Hail Ruinous Recollections!

Ruinous Recollections will open at the Upper Space Gallery, Sunshine Studios, Newton Street on Friday 27th June 2008. The exhibition is intended as a works-in-progress look at the projects participating artists are working on.