Sunday 20 June 2010

ARL -01... on memory



Memory = Identity
but...
What is memory? How is it triggered? 
Personal memory vs collective memory vs received memory...
What happens when memory fades or is suddenly lost?
And what of amnesia... forced by illness or forced by politics?
Memories are crucial to our sense of self, community and society but they are also fragile, tentative and contested. Understood in popular culture to be primarily a cognitive/mental phenomenon this Lab intends to expand our understanding of memory by exploring it also as an embodied, sensorial and social phenomenon. That is, memory resides as much in our flesh and body as it does in mementos and memorabilia and social relationship as it does in the mind.
How then do our senses, material objects and relationships trigger memories that can both locate and dislocate us?
Our memory makes us who we are and the loss of it frightens us more than the prospect of death.
All of these and more will be explored and researched through the perspective of artists, science and society at large, leading up to an intensive camp/lab period with my other associates and artists in August 2010.
Public talks and showings of the early stages of work coming out of the camp/lab will be presented in later in autumn this year. The thoughts and ideas brewed up in this session will be carried forward to a second camp/lab planned to take place with collaborators and perhaps hosted in India and Pakistan. By summer 2011 a new immersive installation will emerge from this process and be ready to tour!

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