Monday, December 14, 2009

Into Sight, Out of Mind: The Five Minute Museum

The hackneyed phrase Out of Sight, Out of Mind is presumptuous. Perhaps this can be said of things without much emotional investment but the truth is that most longings and yearnings are a matter of Out of Sight, Into Mind, which may in fact lead to a kind of obsession and mental loops that are continuously played, which are hard to escape. This is the force behind Michel Gondry's Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind in which a parted couple tries to erase each other in their memories through a medical procedure. If the reality is Out of Sight, Into Mind, then might the opposite have a reverse effect? What would Into Sight, Out of Mind entail? The proposition would be to create a Five Minute Museum with the following ten instructions:

1. Gather gnawing keepsakes.
2. Find a bare, private space.
3. Pin up the tangibles: photos, letters, drawings, etc.
4. Step back and survey the collection for five minutes.
5. Seal your emotions into these objects.
6. Remember the bad times.
7. Acknowledge the good outcomes.
8. Think of what else you would rather be doing and how boring this all is.
9. Take down the display.
10. Part with it.