V&A to host ‘walk-in story’

The V&A commissioned Kunzru to write the new story – Memory Palace – which will then form the basis for the exhibition.

Memory Palace, which is published in June in an edition designed by Sarah de Bondt Studio, is set in a future dystopia, in which books and remembering are banned, and a small group of renegade memorialists fights to save memories.

The book is told from the point of view of one of this group’s incarcerated members, and features his fragmented memories as he lies trapped in his cell.

For the accompanying exhibition, also called Memory Palace, architect CJ Lim and his practice Studio 8 Architects are creating a ‘palace of memories’.

The central space of the exhibition will contain the narrative of the story, while individual rooms leading from this will reveal different ‘memories’ from the book.

Each of the 20 designers and illustrators taking part in the project has been given a section of the text to interpret.

Responses include a series of infographics from Stefanie Posavec, a detailed description of the prisoner’s cell, by Frank Laws, and a reinterpretation of the protagonist’s mis-remembered definitions, by Oded Ezer.

Laurie Britton Newell and Ligaya Salazar, co-curators of the exhibition, say, ‘Memory Palace is a physically immersive illustrated story that explores a new reading format at a time when concepts of publishing are rapidly changing.’

Sky Arts Ignition: Memory Palace, is at the Victoria & Albert Museum, Cromwell Road, London SW7, from 18 June-20 October