The Contemporary Project – Terry Allen: MemWars

Terry Allen presents a three-channel video installation and a related group of drawings, all part of the same series titled MemWars. The video presents Allen, with his wife and frequent collaborator, artist and actress Jo Harvey Allen, performing autobiographical dialogues to introduce related songs. Allen then performs the song, accompanying himself on keyboards, in front of a changing landscape image. There are nine songs in total. The exhibition reflects the artist’s interest in short, evocative theatre pieces called sintesi (synthesis), associated with the Futurist movement. He sees them as “little stabs of memory,” and scripts some of his own in several of the drawings, which have cues specifically for theatrical staging. Other drawings have collaged texts telling stories inspired by incidents in Allen’s own life, with related imagery. Mythology, lore and metamorphosis are strong undercurrents. The punning title for the series suggests the slippery nature of memory itself: one might set out to write a memoir, but if memory is at war, what form would that take?