The Chorus was developed during a two-year Master’s programme at the Netherlands Film Academy as part of a larger research project Place in Memory: Memory in Place.

The installation presents stories of the residents from Srbská, previously named Wünschendorf, a remote village bordering Poland which is located in present-day Czechia. The village, which has almost entirely disappeared, has seen war and exile. It has had different names and belonged to different countries.

The research explores how places like Srbská, which exist in individual and collective memories, can be experienced. Drawing on the archive created for this project, srbska.org, the questions of digital memory, spatial/multi-linear storytelling, and film as an interface to the archive were central to the works produced during the artistic research.

The mixed reality installation presents a narrative environment: a database of voices and stories which are kept in space and made accessible through virtual video screens, spatial sound, and digitised objects. As an interface to access the archive, the participant moves through a spatial soundscape woven from various testimonies, sounds, videos, and objects triggered by their positioning in the space. The Chorus, in turn, becomes an interface of contradicting memories, impressions, experiences, views, and values.

Exhibited at the group show Framing Traces at the EYE Filmmuseum, Amsterdam (2017).

Published and presented as part of Beyond forgetting: persecution / exile / memory (2019) (Bath Spa University & Coburg University).