Daria Martin: Tonight the World

Daria Martin: Tonight the World
June 27, 2019–February 19, 2020

The Contemporary Jewish Museum (The CJM) presents Daria Martin: Tonight the World, a new installation co-commissioned with Barbican, London, by Bay Area-born artist and 2018 Jarman Award-winner Daria Martin. Tonight the World uses film and computer gaming technology to explore the dreams and memories of Martin’s grandmother, Susi Stiassni, who, at the age of 16, fled the former Czechoslovakia with her family from the imminent threat of the Nazi occupation in 1938.

An immersive and atmospheric environment, Daria Martin: Tonight the World operates simultaneously as a portrait of Martin’s ancestor, a self-portrait, and an exploration of intergenerational trauma, intolerance, migration, and resilience. The installation stages a series of intimate encounters with Stiassni’s memories, culled from an extensive archive of her dream diaries. Created over a thirty-seven-year period, these meticulously recorded documents amount to over 20,000 diary pages originally chronicled for the purposes of psychoanalysis. Stiassni’s dreams frequently return to the disquieting history of her childhood home, a modernist villa that was seized by the Nazis after the family left. The Villa Stiassni remains standing today as a Czech Heritage site in the city of Brno. Although Stiassni never returned to Brno after settling in Marin County, she often revisited the family home in her dreams.

A key element of the installation is Martin’s 13.5 minute anamorphic 16 mm film, Tonight the World (2019). Martin has reimagined five dreams from her grandmother’s diaries, amplifying recurrent themes of anxiety and intrusion. Shot on location at the Villa Stiassni, all five dreams take place in or near her grandmother’s childhood home. Four actresses play all of the roles in the film, each representing Stiassni at a different age and life stage. Rather than playing parts in accordance with their apparent age and gender, the actresses interchange roles: in moments the eldest woman plays a child; the young woman plays a middle-aged man; and a middle-aged woman plays a young boy.

The family villa also serves as the centerpiece of Martin’s companion piece, Refuge (2019), a computer game that recreates the villa as a 3D digital rendering. Following the game’s directive, a first-person avatar moves through the villa’s monochrome rooms in search of five objects connected to each of the dreams from Tonight the World. These objects, such as a toy robot or a Chinese warrior figurine, are the only components that appear in color throughout the greyscale videogame. Visitors can watch a playthrough of the game or they can download and play the game themselves. Refuge was developed in collaboration with game developers in Brno, which has become a major technology hub and is often referred to as the “Silicon Valley” of Europe.

Daria Martin: Tonight the World premiered in January 2019 at the The Curve, Barbican Centre, and has been commissioned by Barbican, London and co-commissioned by The Contemporary Jewish Museum, San Francisco. Daria Martin: Tonight the World at The CJM is curated by CJM Senior Curator Heidi Rabben, with exhibition design by Melissa Appleton.