saturday, one day before my next radio show.
topic: memory.
I took this photo and saved it to my memory. strange, the 2 girls do not remember it...
very broad, i know. but i will surely lead it in my own unexpected way to Sarah’s and mine favorite: collective memory.
Will there be more or less people listenin to it, comparing to a week ago?
if you wish, answer within 28 or 29 hours, even 30, following questions, or some, or one of them:
1. is history part of our memory /distant and recent history/?
2. if yess, how does history become our memory?
3. can individual memory be emotionaly manipulated?
4. who or what creates collective memory?
5. what is the key to the successfull emotional manipulation over collective memory?
6. what is your memory you would like to share in my show?
7. name one event that caused mess in collective memory.
these 2 men, though, remember well they got photographeed: they kindly asked to be.
If you give me any answers, i will read them out and translate them in my radio show.
i know it’s at the last moment, but come on, Sarah, Owen, Daniel, Kirk, all of us who care about memory!
I will dare reading one of my poems in english during the show. That one I never posted here. It is in a way about personal memory… and in english. It is called: rock hip hops!
Photoes by: Jelena Markovic
I wish I could remember what the question was!
A few thoughts that you can ascribe to What was my name again?
Memory is partial, selective, fragmented, unreliable, contentious, but it’s all that keeps us in contact with the world outside the immediate moment.
I used to have a very good memory, a long time ago. Fortunately I also lost it a long time ago, so I’ve had time to get used to being someone who isn’t the same person I used to be, a person with a biography that’s a lot less secure than it used to be.
Anyone who thinks they’re in control of their lives has still to experience memory loss.
Nevertheless, although memory is fragile, and we have to live with that, it’s still important to decide what people, objects, events, sensations are important to us, in order so that we can attempt to keep memories of them strung together so as to provide ourselves with the narrative of our existence.
And then it’s the random disorganised intrusive memories that remind us that the world and memory is more than an object of our own creation.
Is that OK? Where do I go to collect the cheque?
Sorry Jelena, I short-changed you, it was late last night and I finished with individual memory and forgot to go on and draw the parallels with collective memory.
Collective memory is built on individual memory. But it is very similar in many ways. We define what we want to remember about our society and our interactions through what we call history, and history is the definition of what we want to remember.
Maybe we need to be cautious about what we refer to as history, because the history we talk about and the collective memory you want to talk about is far from being the whole of the sum of collective experience.
Maybe we should be talking about historiography – the recording of history – rather than history.
Perhaps collective memory is established by the battle between historiography and individual awareness. Collective memory is fallible in the same way as individual memory.
The structure of human activity is defined by its opposite, inactivity. We forget, we don’t pay attention, we do one thing that leaves us with no time to think about another.
Collective memory is active and passive, like individual memory. We choose to remember some things, we forget some things. Other things we don’t necessarily forget, we don’t have the capacity to be mindful of them.
Both collective and individual memory are captives of time. However reliable personal and collective memory are at the mercy of the forces that establish synchronicity and asynchornicity.
Historiography defines but it also preserves. What is important today isn’t necessarily important tomorrow, but it may be important again the day after.
Historiography ensures that the resources of collective memory remain available. Until the Library of Alexandria is burned down, or the National Library in Sarajevo is deliberately destroyed. Or even till my hard disk crashes.
Historiography is the string that we use to organise collective memory. But historiography is like translation – a matter of trust. Quis custodet ipsos custodes? So we need to think of historiography as fallible too.
OK, enough for the moment. I’m sure there’s more I’ve forgotten. And there’s what the people who haven’t read your post yet haven’t yet said – and may never do so. Beyond the boundaries of memory, or in the shadows?
I’ll leave you in peace – good luck with the programme!
thank you, Owen!
You speared me from quoting many long passages of essays, and it is always much more comprehensive to audience to hear opinions, well shaped and deeply thought, that come from a person who knows the issue.
I was just at the radio, actualy today we are moving into a new space, we work hard phisically… the sound man may be so tired that he might cancell my show, that is postpone it for next sunday.
i really hope it doesn’t come to it, i wish to do it tonight, 22h local time. In a couple of hours I’ll make a short post to confirm when the show on memory is on.
this moving thing has been an issue for weeks now, and it had to happen today, of all days! i will go there again, to se if i can manage all alone, at night, with noone else in the building…
thanks!
great comments, Owen!
Jelena, this issue tells me a lot, and the questions you ask are very well chosen. Answering them would be a phd thesis
since it seems the show will not go on air tonight I’ll try to write about this in time for the next show… I’ll try to give short awsers (ike owen did).
You might like to go and download the podcast of the BBC Radio 4 “A Point of View” programme at http://www.bbc.co.uk/radio/podcasts/directory/station/radio4/ – Clive James talking about the falsification of reality by films, eg Baader-Meinhoff Complex. Downfall, Schindler’s List.
If you can’t get the podcast, you can read the text or listen to the programme (10 minutes) at http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/magazine/views/a_point_of_view/