Student Blog

Investigating Memories/Future Memories

After a deep research on Memories and Future Memories, I have been able to understand what these two terms mean in depht.

Future memories are the abilities humans have to plan and picture future events. This means that through all the memories we have gained throughout our lives we can imagine what the future could be. There is two ways of usting our memories for the future:

1. Eoisodic memory which refers to our autobiographical events, memories that we have because we have lived them.

2. Semantic knowledge which refers to our knowledge about the world, understandings based on our knowledge.

"According to P.M.H Atwater, one of the  foremost investigators into near-death experiences, future memory allows people to live life in advance and remember the experience in detail when something trigger's that memory"

This means we can envision the future in a way that is like a memory, where people can live in advance, and blade runner is a clear example for this (comments on the film I will make in another post).

From all the investigation made, I would have never learned that we can actually see the future from past memories. 

Throughout the whole week we have been focused the theme of Memories and Future Memories. We were asked to bring in 10 objects from our present and past to which we have special memories. Then we visited the Victorian and Albert museum where we saw the Memory Palace exhibition and we focused on both themes Memory and Future Memories, as the exhibition proposed a hypothetical furure in which memories were outlawed, and the narrator living in prison explained his own experience and memories he had gained. 

After investigating some artists that have been working with this theme, these are the two who have caught my attention:

Wrapped Reichstag 

(Project for West Berlin completed in 1995 "Der Deutsche Reichstag")

Christo and Jean-Claude

Christo and Jean-Claude covered the emblematic building, the Reichstag, with 1,076,390 square feet (100,000 square meters) of thick woven polypropylene fabric with an aluminum surface and 9.7 miles (15.6 kilometers) of blue polypropylene rope, diameter 1.26 inch (3.2 centimeters), were used for the wrapping of the Reichstag. The façades, the towers and the roof were covered by 70 tailor-made fabric panels, twice as much fabric as the surface of the building.

The building that stands in the heart of Berlin next to the Brandenburg Gate has sufferd many changes throughout the pass of years, burned in 1933 it was also the scene of many battles during the World War II and was almos destroyed in 1945, but during the 60´s it was restored and is nowadays the German Parliment. 

This piece of art created by the two artists involves the theme memory in it. In my opinion when covered,people who have lived in Berlin start to take notice of a building they have had in their city all of their lives. This triggers the spectator who starts to think about the building before it was covered, they start to have curiosity about the past of it, the memories they relate it to.

It also incudes the concept of Future Memory, what would happen if the building was demolished? What would have happend if it had not been restored?

It links sight and memory, when not seen, it makes people wonder about it's past (history memories).

In conclusion, wrapping a momument like the Reichstag plays with human mind and it's memories involving them in the meaning of the buiding.

Another artist that uses her own personal memory (episodic memory) to create a gigantic sculpture is Louise Bourgeois.

Maman (1999)

Louise Bourgeois

These collection of sculptures that have been all around the world are a memory of Bourgeois mother's strenght through different metaphors.

"The spider is an ode to my mother. She was my best friend. Like a spider, my mother was a weaver. My family was in the business of tapestries restoration, and my mother was in charge of the workshop. Like spiders, my mother was clever. Spiders are friendly presences that eat mosquitoes. We know that mosquitoes spread diseases and therfore un wanted. So spiders are helpful and provocative, just like my mother"

Louise Bourgeois

The fact that Bourgeois used a metaphor to remember her mother and recall her personality is a bright idea, and most important that these big scale sculptures have been all around the world in honour of her mother mean she keeps big and important memories of her.

This has given me a new idea to work on the memory project we have been given.

Metaphors to remember.