Paper 2

“The claims that are made and the stories that are told in the name of memory can alter people’s understanding of the world and, of course, alter the ways in which they act in or upon that world.”¹ – Joan Gibbons

The above quote was taken from page 1 of the Introduction of Contemporary Art and Memory: Images of Recollection and Remembrance by Joan Gibbons. I could have stopped there, having read those words, confirming and reassuring the theory that I have been wrestling with for the last several months (maybe much longer, but I’m only referring to consciously), but that would have been too easy. The entire basis for the work that I am currently creating stems from the idea that we, as people, are artificial constructs based upon our faulty memories.

Dr. Joseph LeDoux of the center for Neural Science at NYU explains that memories are physical constructs of the human body, built with specific proteins, which with the elimination or addition of these proteins can be erased or manipulated. Each time that a memory is recalled, it is reconstructed from scratch, creating a copy of the originally recalled memory, with the original being erased. The more a memory is recalled, the more that memory is recopied and reinterpreted in the light of today, and the more it becomes about you, and less about the original memory. He continues to say that the most realistic and reliable memories that we have are memories that we have not thought about since their original creation.

Dealing with the faculty of memory in my work, help here was in the offing, “Proust was to recognize and comment on the important role that memory has as a creative power in bridging the gap between past and present in a way that connects personal truths to a wider audience or readership.”² This is a distinction that needs to be made. The memory that I am attempting to work with is not an institutional or social memory, but a very personal one. One in which the way that life events are recalled, constructed, and manipulated to make us who we are, impact our thinking, the way that we envision our character, and the way that we interact with others and the world.

Artists like Doris Salcedo, Kara Walker, and Krxystof Wodiiczko deal with the larger institutional memory, using their work to illustrate larger concepts and ideas that they may have no direct relationship to (other than being a member of the human race) and initializing conversation about cultural and historical events. While this is a valuable and important goal, my aim is on the much smaller target of personal memory.

I take no position on the benefit or detriment of this personal memory manipulation, simply acknowledge its existence and attempt to be aware of its capabilities. In the case of Alfred Russel Wallace (a natural scientist who proposed the theory of natural selection prior to Darwin), credit for the theory was deferred due to the manner in which he came upon his hypothesis. “Wallace reconstituted his existing knowledge (re-remembered it) spontaneously in a dream-like state, and was prompted to do so by the objects that surrounded him in his fever…”³ At the time, this espousal was discounted as the delirious rantings of a malaria ridden man in the midst of a fever, while shortly thereafter, Darwin provided his laborious research to back up his theory. While both men came to similar conclusions, the path in which they took to get there varied greatly.

The pertinent argument that I am making is that each of us manipulates and reconstructs our memories based on what works well for us. Much like creating an artwork, we stand in front of our memories, sharpening some things and toning down others. We paint over parts that we wish to look differently, while erasing some things altogether that we have no desire to deal with. We are not filing cabinets that store memories on paper, all orderly so that they can be gathered quickly and without alteration. Artist Susan Hiller states, “My “self” is a locus for thoughts, feelings, sensations, but not an impermeable, corporeal boundary. I AM NOT A CONTAINER…”⁴ We are fluid beings, capable of interpretation and reinterpretation of our own history that allows us to remake ourselves over time, perhaps even imperceptible to our consciousness.

Janet Murray calls this “procedural authorship.” A framework is arranged that contains a multitude of information and the viewer organizes it for themselves based on their own experience and baggage that they bring to the viewing.  “Here, memory is not a quest for the authenticity of the past or an excavation of the past so much as it is a backward looking exercise which is more about creating mutable and multiple perspectives through which the past can be experienced.”⁵ As our brains self-organize the information that they are given, an argument can be had over why the brain chooses to arrange things the way that it does, with some people clearly opting for the path of least resistance with their memories construction, and others creating an apocalyptic version of events that creates chaos in their life. I would argue that this chaos is caused not only by the way the memories are constructed, but by the way that one chooses to react to this particular stimulus.

The flip side of this malleable memory is the memory that is painstakingly recreated to create a sense of comfort. Korean artist Do-Ho Suh recreated his family home out of silk so that he might fold it up and bring it with him wherever he traveled. He “recreates as diaphanous architectural space of his familial home in Korea, a house that was already a recreation, modeled as it was on his father’s 1970’s creation of a house that was a careful duplication, down to the recycled materials, of what had been a civilian style house on the grounds of the palace complex in Seoul.”⁶ There is a security in familiarity, and the rigid documentation leaves little room for variability and potential untruthfulness.

These are the ideas that inform the dialogue of my current work; knowledge and malleability, the construct of identity, the procedural authorship and self-organizing of memories, and the impact that this has on your humanity.

1 – Gibbons, Joan. “Introduction.” Contemporary Art and Memory: Images of Recollection and Remembrance. London: I.B. Tauris, 2007. Print.

2 - Gibbons, Joan. "Introduction." Contemporary Art and Memory:  Images of Recollection and Remembrance. London: I.B. Tauris, 2007. 3. Print.

3 - Gibbons, Joan. "The Ordering of Knowledge." Contemporary Art and Memory:  Images of Recollection and Remembrance. London: I.B. Tauris, 2007. 125. Print.

4 – Hiller, Susan. “Susan Hiller’s Painted Works.” Susan Hiller: Recall, Selected Works, 1964-2004. Gateshead, Baltic, 2004. 19. Print.

5 - Gibbons, Joan. "The Ordering of Knowledge." Contemporary Art and Memory: Images of Recollection and Remembrance. London: I.B. Tauris, 2007. 138. Print.

6 - Saltzman, Lisa. "What Remains." Strategies of Remembrance in Contemporary Art. Chicago: U of Chicago, 2006. 94. Print.