Collective Memory
Norma Cole’s “Collective Memory” was a 3-part installation located at the threshold of the exhibition Poetry and its Arts: Bay Area Interactions 1954–2004, curated by San Francisco State University’s Poetry Center Director Steve Dickison, and housed within the California Historical Society on Mission Street in downtown San Francisco from December 10, 2004, thru April 16, 2005. Cole’s installation included a site-specific wall sculpture “Archives Tableau”, a freestanding interactive sculpture “House of Hope,” whose 426 texts were reproduced on free posters for visitors, and “Living Room, circa 1950s,” an open library/writer’s room where the artist worked in residency throughout the 17-week run of the exhibit.
“Collective Memory” was designed to be an open, permeable space that encouraged and relied on interaction with its audience. Cole, along with her assistant, Suzanne Stein, Poetry Center Director and Staff, and numerous volunteers, brought the installation to a point where it could very much develop along its own lines, incorporating many unexpected elements into its life. The audience (students, poets, artists, friends, tourists, neighborhood folks, passers-by) became an integral part of the work. Many of the photographs documented by Cole and others, as well as the 426 texts, and Cole’s notebook sketches for the installations are included in Collective Memory, a limited handmade edition of 48 copies, designed by book-artist Emily McVarish and co-published by the Poetry Center with Granary Books, New York.