Chapter 7. The Right to Produce Memory: Social Memory Technology as Cultural Work (original) (raw)
Related papers
Collective Memory and Digital Practices of Remembrance
Handbuch Soziale Praktiken und Digitale Alltagswelten, (ed.) Heidrun Friese, Gala Rebane, Marcus Nolden, Miriam Schreiter, Springer Fachmedien Wiesbaden, 978-3-658-08460-8 (print), 978-3-658-08460-8 (online)., 2017
Abstract As digital media lead to a transformation of the experience of time and space, they evoke new questions for the field of both personal and collective memory and history. While the bonds that held groups together in pre-modern societies once guaranteed the sustainability of social memory, patterns of common belonging have changed in today’s computerized world. This chapter argues that digital communication technologies have given rise to new unique forms of collectivity through the opportunities they afford for bringing people together around the globe. Furthermore, digital media provide emplacement for collective and global memory. The chapter also raises the issue of whether digital records have the potential to oppose official historiographies with grassroots counterhistory.
Digitisation and Materiality: Researching Community Memory Practice Today
Sociological Review, 2015
Among the most deep-seated anxieties of the Internet age is the fear of technologically produced forgetting. Technology critics and sociologists of memory alike argue that daily exposure to overwhelming flows of information is undermining our ability to connect and synthesise past and present. Acknowledging the salience of these concerns our approach seeks to understand the contemporary conditions of collective memory practice in relation to processes of digitisation. We do so by developing an analysis of how digital technologies (image and audio capture, storage, editing, reproduction, distribution and exhibition) have become embedded in wider memory practices of storytelling and commemoration in a community setting: the Salford Lads Club, an organization in the north of England in continuous operation since 1903. The diverse memory practices prompted by the one hundredth anniversary of the Club’s annual camp provide a context in which to explore the transformations of access, interpretation and use, that occur when the archives of civic organisations are digitised. Returning to Halbwach’s (1992) seminal insight that all collective memory requires a material social framework, we argue, contrary to prevailing characterizations of digitisation, that under specific conditions, digital resources facilitate new forms of materialization that contribute to sustaining a civic organisation’s intergenerational continuity.
Memory in Motion. Archives, Technology and the Social (2017). (Preview: Contents and Introduction)
Memory in Motion. Archives, Technology and the Social Edited by Ina Blom, Trond Lundemo and Eivind Røssaak. Amsterdam University Press, 2016, 332 pages, 39 b/w illustrations. ISBN:9789462982147 How do new media affect the question of social memory? Social memory is usually described as enacted through ritual, language, art, architecture, and institutions, phenomena whose persistence over time and capacity for a shared storage of the past was set in contrast to fleeting individual memory. But the question of how social memory should be understood in an age of digital computing, instant updating, and interconnection in real time, is very much up in the air. The essays in this collection discuss the new technologies of memory from a variety of perspectives that explicitly investigate their impact on the very concept of the social. Contributors: David Berry, Ina Blom, Wolfgang Ernst, Matthew Fuller, Andrew Goffey, Liv Hausken, Yuk Hui, Trond Lundemo, Adrian Mackenzie, Sónia Matos, Richard Mills, Jussi Parikka, Eivind Røssaak, Stuart Sharples, Tiziana Terranova, Pasi Väliaho. Full book available for download in Open Access: http://oapen.org/search?identifier=619950;keyword=memory%20in%20motion
Memory in Motion: Archives, Technology and the Social
How do new media affect the question of social memory? Social memory is usually described as enacted through ritual, language, art, architecture, and institutions ? phenomena whose persistence over time and capacity for a shared storage of the past was set in contrast to fleeting individual memory. But the question of how social memory should be understood in an age of digital computing, instant updating, and interconnection in real time, is very much up in the air. The essays in this collection discuss the new technologies of memory from a variety of perspectives that explicitly investigate their impact on the very concept of the social. Contributors: David Berry, Ina Blom, Wolfgang Ernst, Matthew Fuller, Andrew Goffey, Liv Hausken, Yuk Hui, Trond Lundemo, Adrian Mackenzie, Sónia Matos, Richard Mills, Jussi Parikka, Eivind Røssaak, Stuart Sharples, Tiziana Terranova, Pasi Väliaho.
International Academic Conference on Places and Technologies, 2020
The topic of the paper is related to the processes of promoting the cultural heritage of Belgrade by creating a system of interactive places of remembrance. By identifying the relevant and the forgotten landmarks of Belgrade, the research aims to revive the stories of the places that played a role in the cultural development of the city but remain unmarked to this day. In the research, the landmarks are named "Mesta (Ne)Sećanja"-The places of (Non)Remembrance. The paper aims to define the means of creating site-specific virtual memorials that promote the identity of Belgrade, while simultaneously implementing the "Digital City" concept of urban development. The polygon of research is divided into two zones of Belgrade city centre, that are most visited by tourists. The focus of the work is connecting the 24 historically relevant and unmarked places in Belgrade in a single GIS-based network, which can be accessed by mobile phones or tablets in the specific locations. By connecting the georeferenced places with stories and augmented-reality (AR) models that provide interaction with users in real-time, it is possible to design virtual memorials that create the interference between the physical public space marked in 24 locations and virtual space at the specific web page or application. The paper relies on the results of an experimental project "Mesta (Ne)Sećanja" (The Places of (Non)Remembrance) conducted in 2017 that tested the implementation of the concept at the location of the "Kafana Albanija" historical landmark. The results include the numerical data of user interaction with the digital memorial as well as the guidelines for the physical sign of the memorial in the exact location, based on the tested design variables.
Making visible: Memory Wound and the site of memory in the 21st century (Introduction and full text)
This dissertation utilises existing literature on memory discourse to discuss the role and history of memory sites in the 21st century. Using the case study of the as of yet unrealised memorial site Memory Wound by artist Jonas Dahlberg, the first part will aim to prove and provide context for understanding the function and aesthetic of memory sites from the mid-20th century up to the 2010s. The second will introduce the debates surrounding Memory Wound, and assess its position in and implications for the established sociocultural function of memory sites. Rather than a quantitative survey of memory sites or an inquiry into the role of mourning on a global scale, this dissertation is the result of qualitative research with the aim of accomplishing an in-depth understanding of contemporary memory sites as a social and cultural phenomena within Western Europe and North America. It is important to note that all other case studies and literature used to support the contextualisation of Memory Wound all fit within this literary, geographical, social, and cultural territory. I have utilised existing literature, from seminal texts outlining memory discourse in the 1990s when the phenomena emerged in critical theory, to critical texts from the last decade. I have also gained access to publically available reports, government strategy documents, and articles which have been produced in Norway between 2011 and 2016, outlining the process of memorialisation which ensued after the 22 July attacks. By juxtaposing literature, both propositional and critical, on memory discourse, with reports and academic inquiries into the psychosocial effects of modern memory sites, I have used Memory Wound and its historical backdrop to reflect a contemporary moment in the evolution of memory sites. At a time where developments in technology and cultural representations are continuing and accelerating the cultural shift away from singular narratives and site-specific experiences, the nature of memory sites continues to evolve, and be challenged by the historical and technological effects on our relationship to history, time, and memory, challenging the social and political intentions and effects of memory sites in the 21st century.
This dissertation utilises existing literature on memory discourse to discuss the role and history of memory sites in the 21st century. Using the case study of the as of yet unrealised memorial site Memory Wound by artist Jonas Dahlberg, the first part will aim to prove and provide context for understanding the function and aesthetic of memory sites from the mid-20th century up to the 2010s. The second will introduce the debates surrounding Memory Wound, and assess its position in and implications for the established sociocultural function of memory sites. Rather than a quantitative survey of memory sites or an inquiry into the role of mourning on a global scale, this dissertation is the result of qualitative research with the aim of accomplishing an in-depth understanding of contemporary memory sites as a social and cultural phenomena within Western Europe and North America. It is important to note that all other case studies and literature used to support the contextualisation of Memory Wound all fit within this literary, geographical, social, and cultural territory. I have utilised existing literature, from seminal texts outlining memory discourse in the 1990s when the phenomena emerged in critical theory, to critical texts from the last decade. I have also gained access to publically available reports, government strategy documents, and articles which have been produced in Norway between 2011 and 2016, outlining the process of memorialisation which ensued after the 22 July attacks. By juxtaposing literature, both propositional and critical, on memory discourse, with reports and academic inquiries into the psychosocial effects of modern memory sites, I have used Memory Wound and its historical backdrop to reflect a contemporary moment in the evolution of memory sites. At a time where developments in technology and cultural representations are continuing and accelerating the cultural shift away from singular narratives and site-specific experiences, the nature of memory sites continues to evolve, and be challenged by the historical and technological effects on our relationship to history, time, and memory, challenging the social and political intentions and effects of memory sites in the 21st century.
Public memory - origins and reflections
This is one of the conference papers meant to be part of the book Mnemosophy - an essay on the science of public memory. The book has just appeared (Dec. 2015) but does not contain that text (as announced in it); I have tried to keep the book as short as possible, aware that it will be anyhow accepted with reticence because of its relaxed, even superficial manner and intentionally naive idealism. I may say that the book itself is a testimony how complex is the formative process of collective experience and how much it will finally depend upon creative force of art and simple need for wisdom. That is partly hinted here and, however, elaborated to some extent in the context of the search for a heritage profession and its proper science. Again to provoke and tease in an imagined position of a scout to heritage occupations, I have abandoned my neologism "heritology" to opt for another one, much more charged with ambition to offer not only its descriptive framework but also indication of direction towards a cybernetic theory (in the proper sense of cybernetics as science on guiding systems etc.). Please, see the book "Mnemosophy - an essay on the science of public memory", 2015. (freely available at https://www.mnemosophy.com/the-vault). Integral heritage and, specifically, public memory, is proper conceptual basis for a new science. It would serve as a basis of a (new) profession. Such would be able to to assist the world in peril, being a partner to politics and corporations, - not their servant.
The study of social memory has emerged as a rich field of research closely linked to cultural artefacts, communication media and institutions as carriers of a past that transcends the horizon of the individual’s lifetime. Within this domain of research, the dissertation focuses on memory institutions (libraries, archives, museums) and the shifts they are undergoing as the outcome of digitization and the diffusion of online media. Very little is currently known about the impact that digitality and computation may have on social memory institutions, specifically, and social memory, more generally – an area of study that would benefit from but, so far, has been mostly overlooked by information systems research. The dissertation finds its point of departure in the conceptualization of information as an event that occurs through the interaction between an observer and the observed – an event that cannot be stored as information but merely as data. In this context, memory is conceived as an operation that filters, thus forgets, the singular details of an information event by making it comparable to other events according to abstract classification criteria. Against this backdrop, memory institutions are institutions of forgetting as they select, order and preserve a canon of cultural heritage artefacts. Supported by evidence from a case study on the Europeana initiative (a digitization project of European libraries, archives and museums), the dissertation reveals a fundamental shift in the field of memory institutions. The case study demonstrates the disintegration of 1) the cultural heritage artefact, 2) its standard modes of description and 3) the catalogue as such into a steadily accruing assemblage of data and metadata. Dismembered into bits and bytes, cultural heritage needs to be re-membered through the emulation of recognizable cultural heritage artefacts and momentary renditions of order. In other words, memory institutions forget as binary-based data and remember through computational information.