Meiro Koizumi

Memory and how it works has been a central theme of Koizumi’s work from the very beginning. Meiro remembers watching his father draw a B29 – the American bomber that destroyed Hiroshima and Nagasaki – for him from memory. Meiro Koizumi was nine years old at the time. Although his father had experienced the war first-hand as a child, and even though the B29 symbolised destruction, it elicited in young Meiro not only fear but a sense of wonder as well. He liked the aircraft’s technological sophistication and its streamlined shape.

For the video work Mnemonic (Father), Koizumi asked his father to draw the bomber again – but this time, on the ceiling. The tiny microphone mounted on the pencil amplifies the scratching sounds as his father draws, conjuring up the menacing sound of falling bombs. The title Mnemonic refers to a mnemonic device: a strategy for retaining information in one’s memory.