Collective Memories/ New Babelsberg an installation by Michael Helmerhorst (May 2001)

The installation consisted of ingeniously juxtaposed pulp stills — pinch lines, storyboards and imaginary depictions from the Collective Memory Image Bank, invented and curated by Michael Helmerhorst. Significantly, the artist does not speak of his impressive collection of film stills as an archive, even a personal one, recording muted obsessions, but as an image bank, whose elements have not yet found an ideal order and are ready for usage. He in fact archives the ever-changing undertow of collective memory, composing the gigantic dictionary of the language spoken in our new global Babel Tower.