History, at the end of the 20th century, has become problematic, shrouded and inaccessible. Access to the stories of the past has become exceedingly difficult.What are we to do with the myriad of private and public narratives that are simultaneously vying for our attention? Swiss-born, San Francisco photographer Lukas Felzmann addresses the issues of history and historical narratives in Rivers’s Edge, his recent installation at Hosfelt Gallery. In this compelling exhibition Felzmann juxtaposes images of nature, which suggest the history of the land, with black and white photographs of old classrooms. The flow of water, its erosion of the river bank, are a metaphor for the effects of time, both natural and man-made. The classrooms filled with abandoned books, chairs, and desks call to mind the textual knowledge and the loss of past historical narratives. The desks are engraved with drawings, names,and abstract gouges and scratches. The layers of these inscriptions are marks left by generations of children who have used these desks as positions from which to gain knowledge and interpret the past as well as the present. Stacks of old books, their pages yellowed and torn, are inaccessible. Their spines have been hidden, their titles lost. What remains are shrouded stories, which have been collected, catalogued, analyzed and finally abandoned.
The position of chairs as archaic objects, however, bring us into the current period where they function as faint remembrances of a time before mass media and the information superhighway. With the World Wide Web gaining access into more and more homes, schools and businesses, there has been a massive build-up of information reserves. Textual data of all sorts gluts the phone lines andgets inserted into every aspect of our lives. How is this data to be utilized and to what end? Within this labyrinth of info-texts, what is to happen to the story of the land and the people that live on it? Perhaps they will remain, as Felzmann’s work implies, in the form of hearsay, personal memories and constructed nostalgia for an all but forgotten past.