The Problems of Memory: Versions, Contexts and Conflicts
Place: Medialab-Prado · Plaza de las Letras, C/ Alameda, 15 Madrid
Workshop led by María García Alonso about collective memory management, the transformation of private memories and the creation of narrative tools to interpret and give back to society stories that could rise up ethical and ideological dilemma.
First stage of the Memory and Commons workgroup proposed and coordinated by Juan Gutiérrez within the framework of the Commons Lab. [Live streaming]
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Audio of the session:
"What are the differences between remembrance, memory and history? Some of the possible answers to this question will gradually emerge during this workshop where we shall start with remembrances –turning them through narration into memory-, we will try to concentrate on the production of a common knowledge. Because, even though any kind of stimuli can motivate remembrances in our mind –that are elaborated with vague and imprecise synesthetic fragments, usually in first person, and made of words, music, stones, pain, laughter, sand, smells, etc-, memory is, more than anything else, a narrative, interpretative, social and collectively managed instrument.
Significant social processes actually start with tangible action, which takes place in a specific time and location: someone is born, a war breaks out, a law is approved… It is hard to foresee the effects of certain acts, which have to be evaluated in after their irruption; however, it is not because they might lack importance the moment they are lived –a hunger epidemic or a massacre are easily turned in to milestones for peoples-, but because of the existence in every society of institutions, groups and individuals, whom manage the memory of the events, and transform private memories and the weaving of history.
And it is in the moment of transition from reality to narration when the managers of memory –historians, legislators or politics, among others- explain, simplify and give back to society an organized story out of what used to be a magma of contradictory actions and emotions.
Counter to this homogeneous discourse, the workshop wants to reflect on the different versions that are eschewed on the way, as well as on the ethical and ideological dilemmas that each one of them imply, and vindicate the oral transmission of these stories and, therefore, their capacity to negotiate their meaning in the contextualized present of the enunciation."
NOTE: Due to privacy reasons, one of the testimonies of this session has not been included in this video.