project description

Daniela Comani’s project It Was Me. Diary 1900-1999 comprises a book publication and an audio installation. In both, some of the most poignant moments of 20th century history are applied to an imaginary diary. Other notes refer to the sheer everyday. While the individual dates (day/month) are accurately set to their historical reference, the years do not appear in chronological order. Through a mix of conceptual rigor and poetic depth, Comani unfolds an index of human drama and war, technical and social achievement and catastrophe. But what leaves the most enduring impression for the spectator is a simple yet significant shift: all diary notes are narrated in first-person. A single author, the artist's persona, alleges to hold responsibility for events and actions as diverse as the murder of Malcolm X, the prohibition of slavery in China or Willy Brandt's famous visit to Warsaw. Reminiscent of Felix Gonzales-Torres' billboard project Untitled (1989), Comani exemplifies the interpenetration of the individual and the collective, the private and the public, and, in a skillful and subliminal fashion, renounces the concept of history as a rational progression of events.

www.transmediale.de/content/transmediale08-conspire (transmediale website archive)

related text

Daniela Comani's project It was me. Diary 1900-1999 exists in three versions: as audio-installation, as digital print on vinyl cloth and as book. The text is a diary of 365 days – from January 1st to December 31st – citing events that occured in the 20th Century. Since it is written in the first person, the narrator assumes alternatively both the role of the culprit and the victim introducing an impossible author of the century's world history. The chronology in the appendix indicates the years of the events. (danielacomani.net)

related links

project site: danielacomani.net/a.ichwars.it.html

audio sample: danielacomani.net/a.ich%20wars.html
further images (Venice version): danielacomani.net/biennale_ve.html

image credits

[01] It Was Me. Diary 1900-1999, audio installation, transmediale.08
[02] Daniela Comani: It Was Me. Diary 1900-1999, print version
[03] Daniela Comani: It Was Me. Diary 1900-1999, print version, detail
[04] Daniela Comani: It Was Me. Diary 1900-1999, print version, Venice