Stuhr-Heiligenrode / Bremen
Musée Ferrée temporairement
Jean Guillaume Ferrée, Jamais vu 1926 - 1974
11.03. - 11.04.2005
For a long time Jean Guillaume Ferrée and his work was nearly
unknown because of his will. In 1973, one year before he died by a
supposed accident, he wrote in his will that his complete oevre
was to be put under lock and key for a period of 30 years.
Ferrée suffered from a very rare neurological illnes called
”Temporary Retrograde Agnosia,” since he was 17. The clinical
picture is explained by Ferrée‘s neurologist, Phillipe Gerauld from
the Centré Hospitalier Spécialisé in Lorquin: “People effected by
“Retrograde Agnosie” survive for varying periods of time, often a
couple of weeks to a month. The past is their present reality. When I
met Ferrée the first time in 1965 he believed the year was 1958.
This time-shift causes several problems within. He doesn‘t re-
member people he‘s met or or places he‘s vesited only days
before. His sense of direction was disturbed, houses that hadnt
been built before 1958, seemed to appear suddenly for him. When
effected by the “retrograde agnosis” Ferrée lived in the hospital
where he had a reference point. When the attack was over, mostly
as suddenly as it began, Ferrée had no memory of the time that
had passed, living in the hospital. These attacks came without
warning in uncontrollable intervals. In the last year of his life, the
attacks came more frequently and with greater intensity then
before, and Ferrée realized for the first time what had happened to
him.”
When Ferrée died 1974 Dr. Gerrauld didn‘t believe it was an
accident. He saw it as a suicide, a kind of self-determination to bring
his life to an end in the knowledge that (as Louis Bunuel, who
wrote in his memoirs) „a life without memory is no life … without
memories we are nothing.” It seems that it was better for Ferrée to
die, than to live without knowledge. Ferée died by the shot of a gun,
as he shot photographs for the self-portrait called: “Les Lancumes
Lamplir” (to close gaps).
In 2005, the “Musée Ferrée Temporairement” inaugurated the
first exhibition of Ferrée in Germany, in the village of
Heiligenrode near Bremen, where Ferrée had lived with his aunt in
the 50´s. The museum shows the work that was stored in
Heiligenrode for 30 years.
The main object of curiosity was the “capsule de temps”
(time capsule). It is an imitation of Ferrées room in Lorquin that
he had used as an reference point in his life. All the objects in the
room were placed precisely where they were supposed to be and
no one was allowed to change anything. Ferrée developed a cycle of
drawings of this room, with numbers for each object.
In the exhibition, the room was presented in the image of Ferrée‘s
installation of 1970. A dummy of Ferrée sits on a chair with its back
to the wall. From outside the room, the visitor could see the
room through two holes in the wall - Ferrée‘s eyes - into a
mirror, which reflected the room, along with the model of Ferrée
with the eyes of the observer who stood behind the wall.
Ferrées younger sister Marie Ferrée, who still lives in Lorquin,
is building the Musée Ferrée temporairement Lorquin in their
family-house in Lorquin.
Henry-Pierre Bertin
