BODIES OF MEMORY
Attempt to an introduction
a poem :
Like the parts of the starfish regrowing identically,
memory is produced while it is produced,
memory is in the past, present and future memory is active
memory is activated by bodies by doings by moving
memory is moving
I am running a collective project about materiality and memory. Thinking memory by looking at it. Shapeless substance, or rather always in the process of being formed, and which we only apprehend through its manifestations : movements, gestures. Memory inhabits the exact bodies that produce and shape it, and bodies are then animated/moved by said memory, materializing it. Snake, feasting upon its own tail. Memory is taking shape as it is produced, a strange substance circulating freely from bodies to bodies, from temporalities to temporalities (des devenirs, becomings ). Always at once present, past, future. Strangeness. Maybe this can be starting point : I see a necessity for a vehicle for memory, intrinsically connected together in a close relationship of intra-activation ☄︎.
I then take a closer look at these bodies. What I call bodies here are strange companions, with troubled frontiers. They are contenants, boxes, support. For now, I articulate three types : inert bodies, living bodies, and the hypothesis of a collective body. In the end they are all the same, but this can come later. By looking at them so closely, new details, specificities comes to my attention. How these bodies, even those supposed to be inert, are in fact animated. Stories, projections, humans activating objects and objects activating humans : a whole diversity of interactions, coming together in a collective agencement. Suddenly all is movement, wild field of circulation, choreography. Each of those type of bodies are being moved by the others. Touching each other. Each body draws and holds his own temporality, and all temporalities cohabit : temporality of stones, temporality of humans, temporality of octopuses. It is a finding that I use as standing point to look at all this. Looking at all this from the point of view of those multiple and specific temporalities.
That is how I first became interested in inert objects. Looking at design, the making of forms, creation of contenants. I see that those also hold and show signs of memory. I notice leaks : those bodies are not hermetical and so rarely motionless. Their surfaces and limits are redefined with each contact, each projection, each holding, each story, each point of view. How to describe bodies without establishing their frontiers ? A need to explore. I also wonder about other boxes, organic boxes : a world of brains, unclassifiable unicellular organisms, octopuses, birds, humans. I am letting myself being surrounded by strangeness. A fauna.
Then back to movement : a fauna that dances. And appears this idea that there is a correlation between time and movement - possibility of metaphors emerges, getting away from pure materiality helps me think. Possible dances, choreographies. Things that one knows and things that one learns and things that one teaches. Weirdness of all those gestures passed on through genes. Weirdness of instincts of care, seduction. And also gestures to say and tell and while telling producing memory (languages, history, stories...).
Gestures leading me to contacts : touching as an attempt to transgression, attempt to blur the lines, the surfaces. Dancing with plants☄︎, establishing relationships. Meeting other species. Works of art, hybrids, which also move lines, cross frontiers. Fake archeological artefacts☄︎. Choosing to look at things this way. Transplants, plants, soils, trails, marks. Contacts always renewed, and wondering who touches who when it touches, hard to tell ☄︎. Choosing to put oneself in the world that way. Those transgressions like breeches allowing knowledges and gestures to circulate freely between bodies, inside those multiple temporalities and geographies. We see a collective and composite memory taking shape. Emerges the idea a collective body of memory (a body of collective memory?)
Here, memory is not a matter of remembering or past or else. No reminiscence. To help my research, I mean memory as a substance made of all the notions mentioned above, manifesting through bodies. Those notions constitute all the stuff transiting via genes, cells, care, innate behaviors, educations, knowledges, fictions, works of art : memory as a set of circulating knowledges, something we might have in common, and/or possible to put it in common. I feel it is critical to explore this hypothesis of a collective memory.
I notice that the idea of transmission is not enough for me here, since all this substance seems to circulate through every body and in every direction, one line is not enough (Deleuze comes to help there once again). One line of occasional-one-time-only contacts is not working for me there, because I am looking at organizations of organisms that are like miracles (fairy rings), unicellular organisms knowing/learning without brain (blob), animals that know colors without eyes, trajectories, etc. Also wonderful human stories, fictions, art. Animals and humans putting together forms and shapes for their memory, their knowledge, and so emerge superpositions, hybridations, duplications, tools, cohabitations, relationships....
Because I see that a “material memory” is circulating, in every direction and every kind of body, I need rhizomatic lines, always renewed touches and infinite possibilities for connections, re-lations. (with Didi Huberman about Nietzsche : reappearance of the past, repetition as difference, etc). This way, I am led back to this snake I mentioned, a cycle of memory perpetually being made-produced-shaped by bodies it animates, all at the same time, nowhere and everywhere inside and in between past, present and future.
I can now use memory as a tool to think contacts and circulation, as a magnifying lense helping me observe agencements of bodies.
Memory helps me think bodies and bodies help me think memory.
AC.
Like the parts of the starfish regrowing identically,
memory is produced while it is produced,
memory is in the past, present and future memory is active
memory is activated by bodies by doings by moving
memory is moving
I am running a collective project about materiality and memory. Thinking memory by looking at it. Shapeless substance, or rather always in the process of being formed, and which we only apprehend through its manifestations : movements, gestures. Memory inhabits the exact bodies that produce and shape it, and bodies are then animated/moved by said memory, materializing it. Snake, feasting upon its own tail. Memory is taking shape as it is produced, a strange substance circulating freely from bodies to bodies, from temporalities to temporalities (des devenirs, becomings ). Always at once present, past, future. Strangeness. Maybe this can be starting point : I see a necessity for a vehicle for memory, intrinsically connected together in a close relationship of intra-activation ☄︎.
I then take a closer look at these bodies. What I call bodies here are strange companions, with troubled frontiers. They are contenants, boxes, support. For now, I articulate three types : inert bodies, living bodies, and the hypothesis of a collective body. In the end they are all the same, but this can come later. By looking at them so closely, new details, specificities comes to my attention. How these bodies, even those supposed to be inert, are in fact animated. Stories, projections, humans activating objects and objects activating humans : a whole diversity of interactions, coming together in a collective agencement. Suddenly all is movement, wild field of circulation, choreography. Each of those type of bodies are being moved by the others. Touching each other. Each body draws and holds his own temporality, and all temporalities cohabit : temporality of stones, temporality of humans, temporality of octopuses. It is a finding that I use as standing point to look at all this. Looking at all this from the point of view of those multiple and specific temporalities.
That is how I first became interested in inert objects. Looking at design, the making of forms, creation of contenants. I see that those also hold and show signs of memory. I notice leaks : those bodies are not hermetical and so rarely motionless. Their surfaces and limits are redefined with each contact, each projection, each holding, each story, each point of view. How to describe bodies without establishing their frontiers ? A need to explore. I also wonder about other boxes, organic boxes : a world of brains, unclassifiable unicellular organisms, octopuses, birds, humans. I am letting myself being surrounded by strangeness. A fauna.
Then back to movement : a fauna that dances. And appears this idea that there is a correlation between time and movement - possibility of metaphors emerges, getting away from pure materiality helps me think. Possible dances, choreographies. Things that one knows and things that one learns and things that one teaches. Weirdness of all those gestures passed on through genes. Weirdness of instincts of care, seduction. And also gestures to say and tell and while telling producing memory (languages, history, stories...).
Gestures leading me to contacts : touching as an attempt to transgression, attempt to blur the lines, the surfaces. Dancing with plants☄︎, establishing relationships. Meeting other species. Works of art, hybrids, which also move lines, cross frontiers. Fake archeological artefacts☄︎. Choosing to look at things this way. Transplants, plants, soils, trails, marks. Contacts always renewed, and wondering who touches who when it touches, hard to tell ☄︎. Choosing to put oneself in the world that way. Those transgressions like breeches allowing knowledges and gestures to circulate freely between bodies, inside those multiple temporalities and geographies. We see a collective and composite memory taking shape. Emerges the idea a collective body of memory (a body of collective memory?)
Here, memory is not a matter of remembering or past or else. No reminiscence. To help my research, I mean memory as a substance made of all the notions mentioned above, manifesting through bodies. Those notions constitute all the stuff transiting via genes, cells, care, innate behaviors, educations, knowledges, fictions, works of art : memory as a set of circulating knowledges, something we might have in common, and/or possible to put it in common. I feel it is critical to explore this hypothesis of a collective memory.
I notice that the idea of transmission is not enough for me here, since all this substance seems to circulate through every body and in every direction, one line is not enough (Deleuze comes to help there once again). One line of occasional-one-time-only contacts is not working for me there, because I am looking at organizations of organisms that are like miracles (fairy rings), unicellular organisms knowing/learning without brain (blob), animals that know colors without eyes, trajectories, etc. Also wonderful human stories, fictions, art. Animals and humans putting together forms and shapes for their memory, their knowledge, and so emerge superpositions, hybridations, duplications, tools, cohabitations, relationships....
Because I see that a “material memory” is circulating, in every direction and every kind of body, I need rhizomatic lines, always renewed touches and infinite possibilities for connections, re-lations. (with Didi Huberman about Nietzsche : reappearance of the past, repetition as difference, etc). This way, I am led back to this snake I mentioned, a cycle of memory perpetually being made-produced-shaped by bodies it animates, all at the same time, nowhere and everywhere inside and in between past, present and future.
I can now use memory as a tool to think contacts and circulation, as a magnifying lense helping me observe agencements of bodies.
Memory helps me think bodies and bodies help me think memory.
AC.
