Memory, Trace and the Archive: Part 1

 

Spellings by my former self

Why do we hold on to objects of our past? Arranging them, documenting them and preserving them as a kind of added memory that serves no real use?

  Many of us store mementos in a dusty box, under the bed, in the loft, squeezing untouched junk into a spare cupboard, then shutting the door, unable to see the light of day for perhaps years. There is an interesting contradiction here between not letting go and shutting away the past, but I will come back to this later.

  The past exists within us and becomes embedded within an associated object or souvenir (and usually have no monetary value). These 'memory objects' are different to other possessions, the have no function, yet they are precious to us. From old school books, cards,tickets and clothes.
  They are evidence to an experience, grounding our existence in today, commemorating the memory of a person or moment that is triggered by the, touch, sight or smell of the object. This fuels the obsessive collating of objects, as we produce our own archives and study them on occasion to seek out what we no longer are, and affirm our presence in our own current consciousness.

    'Time has to split at the same time as it sets out or unrolls itself: it spits in two dissymmetrical jets, one which makes all the present pass on, while the other preserves all the past.' 
(Gilles Deluze, 1985:p81) 
                                                                                                             
  We live between several tracks or temporality of awareness, that of retention, perceptual memory and the recollective memory. This split between past and present is fundamental to our understanding of making/recalling memories ' as time flows and each present fades, but it doesn't disappear.'
(Daniel Birnbaum, 2005:p84)

    'Only in brief moments does transformation seem possible, and the change does not concern the past itself but rather our relationship to alterity in all its forms: the past, our own and that of others, and the otherness that exists within ourselves. What is the act of consciousness in question - reminiscence, self analysis, a process of grieving or a paradoxical celebration of that which has been?' 
(Daniel Birnbaum, 2005: p84)

  With commemoration follows mourning, the two go hand in hand, yet simultaneously contradict each other. Within the celebration of the object comes a moment of grief. To commemorate is to serve as a memorial, triggering a reminder of a time, person or a part of ourselves that is no longer is - a presentation of our own mortality, which at times is difficult to face.

  It seems like the elements of memory hold within them continual doubling, mirroring and reflections that forms an intertwined, multidimensional structure in my mind, but how is it held together? how can it be mapped? I am only just beginning to understand all of this. Through beginning this blog I aim to unravel the artistic jargon and explore memory and the archive in contemporary art, along with keeping up to date with artistic practice today. 'I am always in the present and still in the past, and already in the future. I'm always here and elsewhere. I as ego come in between these two modes. I am only in this doubling, and I emerge in this displacement.' (Husserl Ausgabe)