Nalini Malani

Memory: Record/Erase

Memory: Record/Erase is a stop-motion animation by Nalini Malani based on The Job, a short story by celebrated German poet and playwright Bertolt Brecht. Brecht’s story follows a poverty-stricken family during the German depression, as the central character, Frau Hausmann, is forced to impersonate her late husband to procure his job as a nightwatchman to support her two children. Despite her exceptional performance during the job, and even after receiving public commendation for catching a thief, when eventually her identity is discovered during a factory accident she is forced into a precarious existence where she resorts to selling herself to get by. Malini’s interpretation is comprised of drawings on parchment paper that suddenly appear, mutate, and subsequently vanish. Beyond referencing a glaring injustice and highlighting the arbitrary division of labor between genders, Malani poetically alludes to the fragile and ephemeral nature of our identities, our memory, and more broadly our humanity. Like the marks on the paper, Malani meditates on the ease with which our lives can suddenly become undone.