YOU CAN NEVER GO BACK
Nothing disappears completely. Try.
That which survives its own temporal existence can not be defined by perishable traces, memories or relics alone. There is something else that persists when a thing that has once been here no longer exists. It persists, just out of reach, and continues to underpin everything that comes after it.
 

Try following your own tracks back to where you came from. You can not. The only way to look far
enough back in time is by burying yourself in sediments left by history. You understand this, and try to say something about who you are, or have been, by accumulating things over time. By quantifying objects; objects that are intended to explain a subject.
 

You are not alone. We collect and preserve objects that consist of fragmented and uncertain links between detailed representations on the one hand and personal interpretation on the other. We
show them off and seek them out as a kind of reminder. Or maybe as a guarantee of knowledge. In the standardized urban contexts we have built around ourselves, which are seldom able to reflect who we are, we have created dedicated spaces that aim to preserve these objects of knowledge: Museums. Memorials. Historical districts. At some point they might be able to say something about who we are. In the meantime, we can buy souvenirs.
 

We continue to look for qualities that have their very own origins. Their own dates. Situated in a
specific place such as a church, a temple, a fortress, an apartment complex in the former Soviet Union. Without this we would disappear. There is a desperation to it, which is released in the museum. We are constantly trying to say more about ourselves, even though we know that
something disappears in the process.

Isn't that what is happening here?
 

Anton Benois leads the viewer out of what is present. Out of what is close. Out of the representation. He takes you into something further away to tell you more about who we are. He wraps you in a bathrobe, serves relics of the past, comforts you with souvenirs and warms you with fleece jackets, as time witnesses. We are living objects staged in an anti-museum. Full circle. When shooting film on a green screen you can drop your scene onto the background of your choice in post-production. Without anything disappearing. Isn't that what is happening here?
 

You wake up from the noise of a helicopter passing by and a vague memory of where you came from. I’m following my own tracks and end up right behind you.

We can never go back.

- - Martin Palmer