Exploring the impermanence and anarchitectural forms of non-archives, this work documents the light and deteriorating materials stored in the Chevra Nosim genizah; a book graveyard that is hidden in the only surviving synagogue in Lublin, Poland. In this space, ancient books are laid to decay, embraced by contemporaneous time and circumstance. Treated like human bodies, as they fade to dust, the sacred is thought to be released from its corporeal form.

Angela Henderson and Solomon Nagler present a triptych of works that emerge as an anti-monument. Duration is both implicitly presented in the form of a 16mm film, and implied through the subtle stratum of natural light expressed within the work’s sculptural elements. Layers of fabric, grounded in cement castings, at once erase and abstract, while embracing minimalist principles of a direct material presence of the work. A looping projector screens abstract light textures, captured through a series of cameraless experiments, where celluloid material was embedded in the non-archive in Lublin. The light escaping into the space through its porous walls and emanating from the decaying material itself creates a structuralist index of the inevitable transience of form. The projection is embedded in a precarious tower of seven found stones, a reference to memory and mourning, expressing the numerological significance of 7/8. The former representing corporal world and the later ephemeral presence. A leaning, casted cement sculpture is a memorial that has undergone erasure. Tension is expressed through a gestural wrapping of string around 18 measures embedded in the work. As a whole the genizah is a composite form that explores the fragility of memory and the subtle, fleeting presence of light movements.

Das Institut für Alles Mögliche
Wedding, Berlin, Germany