“We have all some experience of a feeling, that comes over us occasionally, of what we are saying and doing having been said and done before, in a remote time – of our having been surrounded, dim ages ago, by the same faces, objects, and circumstances – of our knowing perfectly what will be said next, as if we suddenly remembered it!”
With these words, spoken by David Copperfield in the novel of the same name, Charles Dickens describes the essential components of “déjà vu”.

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Déjà-vu is a fleeting experience where people believe they have previously seen or perceived something they have just experienced. The past, present and even the future can all blend into one during these involuntary juxtapositions of strangeness and familiarity. An unfolding experience in the present conjures memories of the past and a curious perception of their recurrence.
For the artist, the challenge lies in representing this perception. Déjà-vu is a confusing, and intimate experience of repetition which seems to defy logical communication. And yet “false re-remembering” (Henri Bergson) can be discussed via its characteristic manifestations: the sudden division of an experience, the refraction of the visual image and the melting of time. Overlapping, division and repetition are therefore the structural concepts of preference to give aesthetic voice to the dual nature of the phenomenon. Thus divisions and reflections are portrayed literally by screens and glass partitions, film cuts, serial compositions or dizziness-inducing strokes on a large format canvas.
However, the narrative aspect of déjà-vu, the discomfort and confrontation with the unfamiliar is also illustrated in the works of this exhibition. The exhibits share themes of darkness, mystery and poetry while being characterised by a mood which contributes towards lending a rewarding mistrust to the traditional separation of the self and the world, beforehand and afterward, in truth and in illusion. Meanwhile, the conflict of déjà-vu itself is the catalyst for a new experience of perception, feeling and time.

The Exhibition
The Atelier Augarten is dedicating its tenth alternative exhibition to the fascination of false memory: Déjà-vu. Seven contemporary artists were invited to offer contributions on the phenomenon of mysterious recurrences from the past. <<

Déjà-vu
Everybody experiences déjà vu. Déjà vu is a paradoxical concept whereby new situations are experienced as though they have already occurred. People experience the unexpected in the present, and yet are seized by a sensation of familiarity with the experience of having lived through it before. Such moments of vision and clairvoyance last mere fractions of a second and yet are somehow so vivid and long-lasting. Déjà-vu is characterised by a discrepancy, whereby the present is experienced with an air of repetition and yet the past is experienced as if it were the present. A simultaneous double perception quite different from any other form of memory.
With conventional memory processes, we either recall past experiences or such events are evoked involuntarily through association. Déjà-vu, on the other hand, shows us how times can merge, our memories can deceive us and the lines between our internal and external worlds can blur.

Bergson
It comes as little surprise that such a subjective and personal experience is not conducive to analysis. The systematic research, which, incredibly, did not commence until the end of the 19th century, when the early modern protagonists enjoyed their greatest prominence, is primarily based upon psychological observations. At this stage, the experience, which lends itself neither to classification nor explanation, was discussed according to positivistic methods or even in the spiritualist domain. However, in order to question psychology's customary classification of déjà-vu as a malfunction or disruption of perception, while re-emphasising the essential experience of the phenomenon, the Atelier Augarten project adopts another approach. Henri Bergson’s seminal essay on the subject has been reprinted in a catalogue aimed at encouraging a phenomenological angle. “Le souvenir du présent et la fausse reconaissance“ of 1908 is reproduced in the original French as an exact copy of its first print, along with an almost unknown translation from 1928, which was authorised by the writer himself. Bergson has the distinction not only of having introduced the phenomenon into the theoretical arena, but having first investigated its comparability and analogy for the purposes of art. <<

Theoretical contributions
The contributions in the volume contain numerous references to this historically unique text. These cover themes ranging from the significance of déjà-vu for art and literature (Maier, Neumann, Wyss) to the parallels created when a comparative analysis of déjà-vu is made with images produced in the media (Krapp, Trummer). The allegorisation of déjà-vu, its personification as reincarnation, the undead and ghosts, its significance for the literary notion of love at first sight and the parallels of historical exegesis in art and psychoanalytical research are all called into question. The image created by the media can particularly be regarded as a form of déjà-vu as an opposite sign. Photography, which is almost as old in its mass distribution as the scientific study of the subject itself, originates with a glance into a lens, which is captured in a moment of exposure on a photosensitive surface. Déjà vu acts in the opposite way to exposure, whereby a stored image is triggered by an internal shutter and is restored to the present for a fraction of a second. In the history of film, the phenomenon is frequently drawn upon for aesthetic reasons, whether to create tension, unfamiliarity or horror.

Artistic contributions
The more the phenomenon, which stands on the threshold to psychic deviance, causes problems for the scientific community, the greater the standing of déjà-vu in the artistic arena. The play on repetition, which is inherent in déjà-vu, finds perfect expression in the ambivalence of artistic invention. Does not every picture portray a presence, which is absent? Does it not depict a present, which has already happened? The simultaneity of different perceptions captures the character of déjà-vu both as an internal division of the imagination and as a factual visual representation. Division, separation, superimposing and repetition are all structural elements via which the dual nature of the phenomenon can be expressed. David Thorpe (GB) portrays views overlapped or obscured by semi-transparent discs. The pictures of Martina Steckholzer (A), inspired by a moving camera, portray fleeting perceptions with distorted edges, divided according to the art of cubofuturistic deformation. Jan Mancuska (CZ) juxtaposes word with image. A text of a personal déjà-vu experience is projected as a video and played continually in the room. The films of Clemens von Wedemeyer (D) and Isabell Heimerdinger (D) in particular explore the idea of division. Heimerdinger shoots two different yet identical scenes in succession while Wedemeyer separates the film into three parallel segments, projecting the image onto separate large screens. Constantin Luser (A) even uses double handwriting for his paintings. Parallel layers of paint create wide bifurcations and a vibrant web. <<

In terms of content, déjà-vu resides in the confrontation between the uncomfortable and the eerie. The shock of the confrontation and the confusing aura of the retrospective moment are motivating factors in creating an aesthetic of the undecided and of the undecidable. The pictures of American photographer Anna Gaskell give aesthetic structure to motives such as fear, frisson and melancholy, finding approval with the aesthetics of the photographic pictorialism of the turn of the century. Similarly, although using a fundamentally different technique, David Thorpe forms silhouettes from modernistic-idyllic nocturnal scenes. Finally, Clemens von Wedemeyer’s displaces film in a mysterious atmosphere of dream, fantasy, hallucination and somnambular apparition.

Cataloque (in German)
The exhibition will draw together positions exclusively from contemporary art. A catalogue of about 150 pages will be published in conjunction with the exhibition with a comprehensive catalogue of images and texts by Henri Bergson, Heike Maier, Gerhard Neumann, Peter Krapp, Beat Wyss and Thomas Trummer. <<