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Andersdotter,Sara
Déjàexperiencé–Pastness,PersonalNarratives,MemoryandMetaphorlessnessDiscussedThroughaPracticeLedResearchProject
OriginalCitation
Andersdotter,Sara(2010)Déjàexperiencé–Pastness,PersonalNarratives,MemoryandMetaphorlessnessDiscussedThroughaPracticeLedResearchProject.In:Narrative,MemoryandOrdinaryLives.UniversityofHuddersfield,Huddersfield,pp.2538.ISBN9781862180901
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25
2 Déjà-experiencé – Pastness,
Personal Narratives, Memory
and Metaphorlessness Discussed
Through a Practice-Led
Research Project SARA ANDERSDOTTER
Later, when he had time to reflect on these events, he would manage to piece
together his encounter with the woman. But that was the work of memory, and
remembered things, he knew, had a tendency to subvert the things remembered.
As a consequence, he could never be sure of any of it. (Auster, 1999: 13)
Introduction
This paper examines how roles of memory, notions of pastness and belonging
interact within a contemporary art practice in a practice-led PhD project. It
aims to challenge generally held ideas of the functions of memory that are
based on outdated metaphors and expressions, in order to go beyond what has
already been discovered and search for new forms of expression.
The importance of this research project lies in the hunt for an art practice
that circumvents repetition of ‗the same‘, the expected, the ‗already
discovered‘, deceptive or erroneous notions of the themes involved in my
practice; an art practice that poses encounters and challenges preconceived
ideas of how pastness and our experiences of it can be expressed. Gilles
Deleuze hence serves as a key figure within my research; across his oeuvre he
encourages experimentation, the creation of new concepts, the creative
discarding of that which has already been discovered, and the disruption of
dominant languages (2004).
The paper will discuss various historical and contextual relations, before
connecting to the art practice that drives this research project, and will
reference not only other art practices and Deleuzian thought, but also
photographic theory, fictional writing and a brief history of metaphors of
memory.
Narrative, Memory and Ordinary Lives
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26
Removal of Presuppositions
The research project, commenced in 2006, is formed around questions of how
memory is expressed through art practices, language and theory, with the aim
of developing a practice that discusses memory, or experiences of pastness,
beyond representation, beyond the metaphor. Such an endeavour involves a
battle with presupposed ideas of what memory and the past ‗are‘, and how
these can / cannot be expressed or communicated.
Problematic contentious relations between memory, personal narratives
and photography became clear in the early stages of this project; I started the
research project by focussing on my inability to recognise my childhood in my
family photographs; these frames did not seem to match, adequately reflect or
represent my internal experiences of memories of my childhood. I began to
wonder how these internal experiences can be discussed, expressed or reflected
upon within an art practice and in the wider cultural context.
The results of a pre-doctoral survey into how family photographs and
memory are considered stood in stark contrast with my own experiences
(Andersdotter, 2005), leading to an initial critique of how metaphors inform, or
influence, thought. 60 participants across a range of age groups, professions,
locations and nationalities gave their responses to questions on their thoughts
and feelings about their family albums. One of the questions, How would you
describe a family photograph, resulted in a 45% response that it is A „physical‟
memory (see fig 1). Other responses to this question included An aid for
memory, An aid for telling a narrative or A mere object, with the additional a
communication tool, a piece of evidence and a tool for bridging distances.
Figure 1
A question from a 2005 survey with 60 participants
answering questions on family photographs and
memory. Participants answering „Other‟ to this
specific question gave examples such as
“a communication tool”, “a piece of evidence”
and “a tool for bridging distances”. (Andersdotter 2005)
A ‗physical‘ memory
(45%)
An aid for
memory (37.5%)
An aid for telling a
narrative (11.5%)
A mere object
Other (5%)
(1.25%)
Déjà-experiencé
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27
Where possible, one-to-one interviews were carried out with some of the
participants after the survey was completed. When asked about the response A
„physical‟ memory to this particular question the participants appeared to feel
strongly about the photograph‘s role as a physical memory.
There appeared to be a gap between my own attitude and wider cultural
expectations of photography to function in a particular manner, to encapsulate,
evidence, freeze, preserve and accurately reflect the past in the form of ‗a
memory‘. My experiences of encounters with photographs had led to a
particular viewpoint, whilst my understanding of memory reflected something
entirely different from photographs; something fleeting, something vague,
unsettled and mutable, a present absence, sometimes almost graspable, and at
times unpredictable. This gap became a point of scrutiny within my research, a
gap that demanded a removal of presuppositions.
The eradication of pre-existing beliefs and opinions before attending to a
question may be an ideal prerequisite, however, this is a difficult and complex
undertaking, a problematic task that Gilles Deleuze outlines in the chapter The
Image of Thought in his primary doctoral thesis Difference and Repetition
(2004: 164-213). He criticises the use of ‗commonly held ideas‘ as foundations
for a theory, and discusses the prevalence of such applications: ‗Many people
have an interest in saying that everybody knows ―this‖, that everybody
recognises this, or that nobody can deny it‘ (ibid 166); but adds that such
theories will only hold as long as they remain unchallenged. Deleuze does,
however, stress the difficulty in removing presumptions and dominant beliefs:
‗Where to begin in philosophy has always – rightly – been regarded as a very
delicate problem, for beginning means eliminating all presuppositions‘ (ibid:
164). Baruch Spinoza, by whom Deleuze has his acknowledged influences,
also addressed this problem, and warned that it is our own knowledge that
limits us to ‗inadequate ideas‘ (Buchanan 2000 5). Deleuze‘s search for
‗adequate ideas‘ means a disentanglement from set beliefs and ideologies, and
an aim for absolute freedom of thought (ibid 6), however utopian such aims
would be.
Metaphorless Utopias
Though we may have come to rely on metaphors to the point where we cannot
linguistically do without them (Lakoff and Johnson, 2003), it is nonetheless
important to acknowledge and question our usage of these. In essence,
metaphors simplify the often complex concepts or structures they are designed
to communicate, and confusion between context and expression occur. A
revision of traditional communication models that allow for such confusions
may be a difficult, if not quixotic undertaking, however, it may lead to an
Narrative, Memory and Ordinary Lives
______________________________________________________________________
28
autonomy of concepts and systems with their own values, meanings and
distinctive structures.
Difficulties in discussing Memory
Douwe Draaisma‘s well-illustrated Metaphors of Memory (2000) gives a wide
overview of a range of known allegorical descriptions of memory, dating back
to Antiquity and Aristotle. If we were to crudely summarise these, we can see
that this history can roughly be described as a looping of a few strands of ideas
in regards to memory: images, and writing, architecture, and mechanical
devices or materials used within the sciences (see fig 2).
Figure 2
These four basic categories, containing recurring ideas and themes, have since
Antiquity been expressed in a variety of forms, from Aristotle‘s classic wax
tablet metaphor, in which memories were impressed into the wax of the soul,
leaving a permanent eikon or image, to the Socratic ‗internal scribe‘ writing in
the soul, which initiated the idea of the problematic ‗memory trace‘ that was
still referred to in the 20th Century. Antiquity also presented architectural or
compartmental theories of memory, which gave rise to a number of metaphors,
Technology / physics
Images ‗impressed‘
into memory
Writing
Architectural
structures /
compartments
Déjà-experiencé
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29
from temples and churches, to palaces and storage rooms. These first three
strands remained dominant throughout the Middle Ages, and were only
superseded by the mechanical, technical or scientific metaphors from the
Enlightenment onwards, aside from a short interruption by Romanticism.
The vague and ungraspable nature of memory has undoubtedly led to this
wide range of metaphors in attempts to grasp, understand and communicate its
properties (see fig 3), however, it is questionable whether we have come to a
greater cultural or scientific understanding of memory and our experiences
‗pastness‘.
Figure 3
Wax tablet / slab of
wax
Painting; portrait
Aviary / bird cage
Storage room;
storehouse; depository
Compartment; drawer;
niche; cell; treasure
chamber
Cavern
Temple; palace;
cathedral
Book (with an
‗internal scribe‘ /
‗engraver‘ / ‗painter‘);
library; mystic writing
pad (Freud)
Attic
Phosphorescent
material
Mirror
Landscape
Ravine; abyss
Depth of the ocean
Stream; brook; creek
Forest
Vast labyrinth
Photograph; gallery of
photographs; album;
compound
photographs; magic
lantern slides
Mechanical piano
Loom
Phonograph; album of
phonographic sheets
Switchboard at a
central telephone
station
Railway track
(memory trace theory;
necessitating a ‗mental
switchmnan‘)
Film; cinematic
relations
Computer
Hologram
(Draaisma, 2000)
The Photographic Metaphor
The photograph, a result of a multitude of both sequential and parallel
scientific research projects (Batchen, 1997), became associated with memory
in its early stages in the 19th Century (Draaisma, 2000: 69, 104). However, it
was not without its critics; the writer Johann Huber and scientist Théodule
Ribot were quick to oppose any photographic relations to memory (ibid: 123,
125). Yet, the metaphor survived.
Narrative, Memory and Ordinary Lives
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30
The photographic metaphor of memory‘s inadequacy lies in its inability to
account for many of memory‘s characteristics – only a chosen few – and since
a majority of metaphors of memory are based on already existing objects,
systems, concepts or narratives, they too are inadequate. The photographic
metaphor is seen through and supported by terminology including expressions
such as ‗picturing‘ or ‗visualising‘ ‗memory images‘, ‗in our mind‘s eye‘ in
regards to remembering, and photographs are often referred to as material
memories, linguistically and cognitively blurring the line between physical
objects and metaphysical ideas.
Figure 4
Photographs, Memory and Sensation
Within photographic theory, the relationships between photographs and
memory are discussed to various degrees. Photo-historian Geoffrey Batchen‘s
Forget Me Not (2004) evidences some of these discussions, noting that:
Some of photography‘s most insightful critics have argued that photography and
memory do not mix, that one even precludes the other… [Roland] Barthes, for
example, has claimed that ‗not only is the Photograph never, in essence, a
memory… but it actually blocks memory, quickly becomes a counter-memory‘…
for Barthes, it seems, memory is not much image as sensation. (ibid 15)
Ranschburg's apparatus for investigation of
comprehension, association and memory, 1903
Illustration used with permission from Dr Thomas Perera
at Montclair University
© http://chss.montclair.edu/psychology/museum
Déjà-experiencé
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31
This ‗sensation‘, as different from ‗image‘, is further explored in Barthes‘
Camera Lucida (1979/1993), in a discussion on Marcel Proust‘s A la
Recherché du temps Perdu and Proust‘s dissatisfaction with photographic
images. Proust‘s often referenced protagonist experiences surges of involuntary
memories from the taste and texture perceived from consuming a tea-saturated
petite madeleine (2003: 50); here, the experience is overpoweringly nostalgic
and sensual – in place of the image, textures, flavours and scents coalesce and
form a ‗sensation‘. This experience, triggered by what Deleuze in the chapter
The Secondary Role of Memory in Proust and Signs (2000: 52-66) calls a
‗sensuous sign‘, is a sign that demands ‗reading‘, interpretation; hence, the
petite madeleine in the case of Proust becomes synonymous with Combray.
This ‗sensation‘, ultimately, derives from a sense of longing and desire for
what cannot be physically returned to. With this notion of the ‗sensation‘ in
mind, Batchen notes:
To induce the full, sensorial experience of involuntary memory, a photograph must
be transformed. Something must be done to the photograph to pull it (and us) out
of the past and into the present. (2004: 94)
This ‗something‘ may take the form of personal narratives, a drawn
identification with that image and its contents. However, such links are
inherently fragile, impermanent, shifting, and difficult to transfer or
communicate. The photograph as a ‗sensuous sign‘ to the past, a monument,
commands reading. This preservation of matter or ‗sensations‘ through these
monuments do not encourage recall; instead, these monuments demand
fabrication (Thanem, 2001: 32). The recollection-fabrication act hence requires
what Mieke Bal calls a ‗narrative agent‘ who through using reflections of the
past as a ‗narrative device‘ is able to ‗manipulate the linearity of time‘ (2000:
8); a narration emanating from the images. The photograph here, as a
‗sensuous sign‘ attached to ‗narrative devices‘, becomes a mise en abyme; an
object generating infinite images, narratives and ideas within itself as an
image, narrative and idea.
Fleeting reflections on memory
If we consider the past to be uninhabitable, a point to which we cannot return,
and a part of what Deleuze refers to, in Bergsonian terms, as ‗that which makes
the present pass‘ (2004: 80), we find ourselves in an ever shifting continuum of
events. How do we reflect or express this accumulation of pastness, or our
experiences of it, as it pushes the present into being?
Narrative, Memory and Ordinary Lives
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32
Art and Memory
I set out wanting to propose a less static manner of speaking of memory, a less
ocularcentric approach, proposing, perhaps, a shift from a déjà-vu to a déjà-
experiencée. In terms of ‗making art‘, that meant moving away from the pure
image to working with space, or more accurately, towards creating works to be
encountered in space.
Looking towards other art practices with similar ambitions resulted
primarily in examples within installation art. Having become ‗restless with the
flat surface of the screen‘ and letting his work ‗evolve into the rest of the
space‘ (www.broadartfoundation.org), the contemporary artist Doug Aitken‘s
2002 new skin video installation uses more than just moving images; it is a
work that looks both at video and space, pushing the boundaries of the 2-
dimentionality of film. Four projections draw together on large, elliptical
display screens, both revealing Aitken‘s interest in the non-linearity of memory
and perception, as well as allowing the viewers to spatially experience the
piece. The video exposes the affecting descent to blindness of a young woman,
desperately searching her flat for images in order to ‗memorise‘ them before
losing her sight completely. She knows that she is facing an ‗internal‘
existence, hoping to rely on her memories of experiencing the ‗external world‘
in order to remain connected with it. As she scrutinises the images, she finds
that these new visual impressions seem to rub out earlier memories, revealing:
‗The more I see, the less I believe in the images I find‘ (ibid).
Other expressions of non-linearity and spatial considerations of memory
and personal narratives include Tacita Dean‘s Totality from 2000, or her
1996/97 piece Disappearance at Sea, in which the central character finds
himself lost in the vastness of the sea. Dean‘s preoccupations with the
individual‘s experience durée, notions of time, space and human longing
heavily influence her work in the desire for creating an experience in which the
viewer becomes immersed in the space; noting that she wants them to ‗feel
drenched in time‘ (Szymczyk, 2005: 78).
Navigating Through New Terrains
My art practice, in the search of a way of connecting to my past and a way of
addressing memory beyond the metaphor, deals with experiences of pastness,
nomadic existences, loss and disconnection. These issues may be personal, but
still reflect our – as living beings – relationship to the past and that which
cannot be returned to.
Unable to connect to the past through my family photographs, I decided to
return to my native Sweden in order to see what I do connect with. This
Déjà-experiencé
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33
decision has turned into regular journeys, each time with the conviction that
‗this time‘ I will connect, ‗this time‘ I will find that sense of belonging. And I
leave for Sweden, and I arrive, only to realise the actuality of my nomadic
existence.
This ‗return‘ has come to serve as a key feature in my work, as it has
turned out to be a futile return; I cannot ‗come back‘ to my place of birth ‗as it
was‘, I remain the ‗outsider‘. The sense of futility here, much like the
mnemonic device, derives from a fundamental inability to return; the memory
trigger only offers one sense of a ‗return‘ to what has-been, a metaphysical but
never a physical return to the past. In my practice, however, I physically do
return to my country, but it has ceased to be what it once was for me, and I am
only able to connect with it and my past through these journeys in a much
severed manner. Our uses of the memory-trigger – like my journeys ‗back‘ –
are, however, not futile in a negative sense; on the contrary, I believe it is very
important to acknowledge this futility and understand what it means, and does.
Here, the realisation of the futility or the failure becomes a valued and useful
element – understanding that we are unable to return. This ‗thinking-through‘
practice as a process has formed my own understanding of this non-return.
The impossible return, leaving us in a permanent form of exile from the
past, is actualised through the making of the present – Henri Bergson (1988)
would have claimed that it is this past that pushes the present into being, a
present that is nothing but a contraction of the entirety of our past – and it is by
realising this impossibility of such a return that we are faced with time, and
ultimately our own mortality. Roland Barthes, alongside Susan Sontag, realises
the memento mori of the photographic image, and he elaborates on the intricate
relationship between photographs and the realisation of our imminent death in
Camera Lucida (1993), in a discussion on the marking of time that reveals his
discomfort over the sound of the shutter closing, as it represents another instant
passed, and another step towards his inevitable death.
Hunting
My continuous journeys to Sweden have resulted in a series of photographs of
hunting towers (Andersdotter, 2009) that are found scattered across the rural
landscape – strange non-loci that I visit; common unregulated structures,
unmarked on maps (see fig 5 and 6). They do, however, through their ubiquity
across the Swedish landscape form an important part in my identification of
that landscape. They form a part of the Swedish psyche, of my memories of my
childhood, and form a rare connection between myself and my place of birth,
the country I ‗should‘ be able to relate to and consider ‗home‘. Though anyone
may climb up, enter, sit in, and occupy these towers without permission from
Narrative, Memory and Ordinary Lives
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34
the hunter or hunting team who built them, they are purpose built structures for
the act of killing – viewing, hiding, waiting, aiming, watching, firing, from an
elevated point.
Figure 5
Sara Andersdotter, Hunting Tower, C-type photograph, 2007
These towers have come to serve as representations of my childhood; the kind
of childhood that was never documented photographically, but is yet
remembered. In this search for a way of relating to previous, undocumented
experiences, I have tried to reflect on them in various manners – often taking
into consideration the emotional and connective values of materials – mainly
found materials – temporal tensions and the bodily experience of particular
encounters, primarily in terms of installation work.
Déjà-experiencé
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35
Figure 6
Sara Andersdotter, Hunting Tower, C-type photograph, 2009
Aside from the series of photographs of hunting towers, I have created
installations on memories of coming to terms with certain aspects of life –
things that most of us learn at some point in childhood – predominantly on
death, on the sudden understanding of the precariousness of life, and the
realisation of adulthood as the next but not the final stage of existence. One
such installation, She felt empty in my hand (see fig 7), consisted of several
parts; a life size hunting tower-like structure built inside the exhibition space, a
square of grass grown in the exhibition space on soil brought over from
Sweden, a small taxidermied bird resting on the grass, a single light bulb
hanging from the ceiling above the grass, and an audio recording of the sound
of breathing emanating from the top of the enclosed tower.
Narrative, Memory and Ordinary Lives
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36
Figure 7
Sara Andersdotter, She felt empty in my hand (Learning about Death),
installation [wooden tower, grass, Swedish soil, taxidermy bird, light bulb,
audio piece (breathing), brown wrapping paper, map], 2009
The tower, reaching all the way up to the ceiling, was inaccessible, and the
dead bird was placed out of reach on the grass; both alluded to the
impossibility of physical return and access to that which has passed. There was
a tension between the obvious lifelessness of the bird and the sound of
breathing, which could be taken as an attempt to breathe life into the dead bird,
though there are also connections between my childhood experiences leading
to recognition of the inevitability of death, and a deeper cultural acceptance of
death as a part of life. The installation provided encounters with various
materials, but it also played on the tensions between those materials; tensions
that could only be felt in their presence. The inability to reach or to access, the
bringing together of familiar materials, and the translocationary nature of the
exhibition mirror my feelings about the very experience of memory –
something familiar, fleeting, mobile but also part of that which cannot be
returned to.
Déjà-experiencé
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37
Conclusion
This paper was written with a particular art practice in mind, a practice that is
formed around notions of memory, pastness, narratives and personal identity
within a nomadic existence, and the contextual and historical issues that such a
practice references. The purpose of this research is to push the boundaries and
challenge ideas of how these issues can be reflected upon in an art practice, in
order to create new forms of experiences within art practices.
The journey is a recurring element of my practice, which appears to be as
elusive as the notions of memory I have attempted to tackle in this paper.
However, it seems as if I am only able to connect to experiences of pastness
through the journey itself; an ‗event‘ that can only be defined through
movement and never through that which is fixed – it is to the journey that I
belong – a shifting sense of ‗home‘.
Metaphors are vital to our language, but I also believe that it is important
to bear in mind that they have a pharmakon effect; the double-edged ability to
be both constructive and deceptive at the same time. In terms of my field of
study, metaphors generally appear to have obscured rather than clarified our
understanding of memory, which has led to ill-informed expectations of
external systems such as photographic images, in order to calm the anxiety of
the unknown – here memory, as it is still largely an unknown phenomenon.
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