AKA, Herring Park
Simone Lucas
In residence from April 8 avril until June 6 2025
At Ada X
What if history had a smell? From 1955-57, in the industrial city of Łódź, Poland, it did. The site of a former herring market in the working-class Jewish quarter was to be revitalized into a park. As excavators broke ground, the unmistakable smell of herring was released. Brine that had soaked the earth of the fish market rose into the air, lingering for the duration of the park’s 2-year construction period. Today, the park, officially named Staromiejski, is known by locals as “Herring Park”.
AKA Herring Park is a multimedia installation harnessing oral history interviews, 3D graphics, and food preservation towards the creation of an imagined diasporic environment. It uses multiple channels of video projection and investigates how sensory mediums such as pickling brine can tell stories. For this residency, Simone Lucas’ aim is to create an immersive space which provokes conversations on the role of digital media and the senses in preserving memory.