HYPERACTIVE MEMORY RUINS

Hyperactive Memory Ruins is a project created by the artists Joel Arantes Correia and Ricardo Cruzes.

Joel and Ricardo have one thing in common: they have lived in Lagos, Portugal, for many years since they were young. The place and memories fuelled their collaborative artistic practice, formally activating ruins and sites using their experimental art. 

Joel has been living in Oslo for nine years, and with an eight-year-old son born there, there are no plans of returning to Portugal for many more years. However, he has adapted and is finding his way into the Norwegian society and art scene, and now he wants to share and reconnect.

Ricardo, with a background in design and technology start-ups (he sold his company in 2021), lives in Lagos and is fully dedicated to his artwork.

To start, the artists decided to search for ruins in Lagos regarding their architecture, location, and memory background.

It's possible to find multi-disciplinary interventions/installations, like painting the revealed structural layers from the buildings, provoked by the passing of time and the elements, and now activated with painting. Also, with standard sculpture, object assembly, sound recording and production, and documental interviews with key persons that were habitants or new habitants of the intervention places.

For Joel and Ricardo, contact with the local communities is crucial for this project's success. They are focused on continuity, gathering information and knowledge passed from generation to generation by word of mouth, developed, explored and transformed with an experimental attitude characteristic of these two artists.