#memoriesconnect. Curious to know how they do it?
A short introduction to a 3-year adventure, a kick-off conference & a collective attempt to explore the new faces of memory making and sharing in the 21st century
What’s the first thing that comes to mind when hearing the word memory? When I kept on asking myself this question some time ago, different pictures popped up spontaneously in my head:
nostalgia for evenings that passed and will never come back, the sticky notes I use to list the week’s urgent tasks and numerous neurons firing somewhere deep inside my brain while I’m trying to answer my own question. Are these, however, the only dimensions that this fascinating concept of memory can have? Having taken a step further into the exploration of memory I can only yield “no” as an answer to this question…
In his book, Memory: A History (2015, Oxford University Press), Dmitri Nikulin puts together a very informative -although not exhaustive- history of memory, tracing its emergence in ancient philosophy as approached by Plato and Aristotle. As Sarah K Robins writes in the book’s review (Robins, S. K. 2016), Nikulin’s volume aims to provide an answer to the question of what is memory. By looking at memory’s history, Nikulin’s work also serves the supplementary aim of explaining
“why memory currently enjoys such prominence as an area of research and inquiry”.
In an earlier publication from 2008, Roediger and Wertsch give different definitions to memory derived from different disciplines ranging from psychology and neuroscience to sociology, anthropology, education and history or even law and business (Roediger & Wertsch, Creating a new discipline of memory studies, 2008). Finally, the attempt of Tulving to gather and unify the different memories and memory modifiers he ever came across results in a list of 256 kinds of memory: auditory memory, distributed memory, diencephalic memory, false memory, involuntary memory, motor memory, state-dependent memory and unconscious memory, to only name a few.
Why does memory matter today?
The ubiquity of memory can trigger -at the very least- a reflection on its importance in different assets of our lives. Assessing the concept of memory through the lens of Human Sciences, we can find it underlying political campaigns, public and institutional policies, history, education and other domains, forming our individual and collective identities, beliefs, ways of action -or non-action, participation and social cohesion or disruption in direct and indirect ways. In this context, one may come across the concept of memory accompanied by the following modifiers: collective memory, public memory, social memory, historical memory, political memory, to name only a few. As Sharon MacDonald argues in her work, Memorylands,
“Memory is never only about the past. […] what is remembered, how and by whom is deeply entangled with both the present and the future”.
Living in an era of increasingly diverging social forces ranging from nationalist movements to Islamist radicalisation, the demand for a socially inclusive public memory re-emerges as a relevant and urgent issue. Staging and empowering membership and contribution of people from diverse social and cultural backgrounds considering the past, present and future development becomes an an undeniable reality. As society we need to acknowledge, understand and address the implementation of inclusive public memory by introducing new strategies, practices and infrastructures.
Under this light, hearing the word memory is now triggering different questions: what shape do memories take in the current social context; which practices underly the shaping and sharing of memories and who is involved in the process; how are memories being used to serve radicalised opinions and how can they serve inclusion and a basis for envisioning possible futures.
These are questions that need to be addressed individually but also, importantly, through the way in which they relate and interconnect. There is a need for holistic approaches that bring together a framework of understanding of the actors involved, the concepts and strategies they enable and the ways in which they interact with each other.
How do memories connect?
Having a shared interest to build one such framework, 13 young researchers join forces alongside academic and non-academic institutions, other researchers, practitioners and communities. All of them being part of the POEM — Participatory Memory Practices project, they choose 3 different perspectives and 13 research questions, starting on a 3-year research journey to explore how memories connect through:
#1 Memory Institutions (museums, libraries, archives), e.g.:
“How can crowdsourcing in museums lead to engagement with the collection, co-creative knowledge production and diversified audiences?” or
“How can social media be used to furhter the social strategies of museums such as inclusion and accessibility?”
#2 People & Groups, e.g.:
“How can we explore and collect narratives from the Namibian youth about their post-colonial experience and intervene with these new narratives to prototype possible future memories?” or
“How can future-oriented narratives and representations of young people in Greenland and Denmark be generated within the framework of design anthropology?”
#3 Media Infrastructures, e.g.
“How do young people use digital media to create personal memories and what do these practices mean to them?” &
“What are the conditions and the resources required to build internet ecologies of open cultural knowledge that could enable people to shape a future collective memory?”
3 + 2 days to kick-off the research journey…and the people behind the scenes!
The POEM journey was officially kicked-off in October 2018 in Hamburg in a first week of acquaintances, introductions to the topic, training, collaboration and key-notes. Among them, Susanne Wessendorf (London School of Economics) introduced the concept of superdiversity, Susanna Ånäs (Open Knowledge Foundation Finland and Wikimedia, Finland) shared insights on Wikidocumentaries and Gisela Welz (Goethe University Frankfurt/Main, Germany) explained on heritage making and participatory memory practices in Europe (for full program, see https://www.poem-horizon.eu/wp-content/uploads/Programme_POEM-Opening-Conference.pdf and watch the talk recordings at https://lecture2go.uni-hamburg.de/l2go/-/get/v/23989). Having communication at the very centre of its interest, POEM invited Mar Dixon’s expertise on designing the journey’s communication strategy. Last but not least, Sandra Trostel shared another perspective on inclusion and culture through her unique ethnographic approach to the world of hacking and the film “All Creatures Welcome”.
Come on board…and stay tuned! @POEM_H2020, newsletter https://www.poem-horizon.eu/, instagram.
Credits to all the POEM actors for making this wonderful experience possible, all the PhD fellows and especially to Jennifer, Susanne and Franziska for proofreading and suggesting constructive feedback for this article.
