Memory, Forgetting and the Moving Image

226 Pages·2016·3.367 MB·English

by  Caterina Albano (auth.)

Memory, Forgetting and
the Moving Image
Caterina Albano
palgrave macmillan memory studies
Palgrave Macmillan Memory Studies
Series Editors
Andrew   Hoskins
University of Glasgow
Glasgow ,   United Kingdom
John   Sutton
Macquarie University
Macquarie ,   Australia
The nascent fi eld of Memory Studies emerges from contemporary trends
that include a shift from concern with historical knowledge of events to
that of memory, from ‘what we know’ to ‘how we remember it’; changes
in generational memory; the rapid advance of technologies of memory;
panics over declining powers of memory, which mirror our fascination
with the possibilities of memory enhancement; and the development of
trauma narratives in reshaping the past. These factors have contributed
to an intensifi cation of public discourses on our past over the last thirty
years. Technological, political, interpersonal, social and cultural shifts
affect what, how and why people and societies remember and forget. This
groundbreaking new series tackles questions such as: What is ‘memory’
under these conditions? What are its prospects, and also the prospects for
its interdisciplinary and systematic study? What are the conceptual, theo-
retical and methodological tools for its investigation and illumination?
More information about this series at
http://www.springer.com/series/14682
Caterina   A lbano
Memory, Forgetting
and the Moving
Image
Caterina   Albano
Central Saint Martins
University of the Arts
London , United Kingdom
Palgrave Macmillan Memory Studies
ISBN 978-1-137-36587-3 ISBN 978-1-137-36588-0 (eBook)
DOI 10.1057/978-1-137-36588-0
Library of Congress Control Number: 2016954647
© The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s) 2 016
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lisher nor the authors or the editors give a warranty, express or implied, with respect to the
material contained herein or for any errors or omissions that may have been made.
Cover illustration: © Kerry Tribe
Printed on acid-free paper
This Palgrave Macmillan imprint is published by Springer Nature
The registered company is Macmillan Publishers Ltd. London
A
CKNOWLEDGEMENTS
The fi rst idea for this book stems from my collaboration with fi lmmaker
and sound artist Shona Illingworth and an invitation to talk about Kerry
Tribe’s work H .M . at London Camden Arts Centre during the time of her
exhibition there. The Amnesia Forums as part of Shona’s project Lesions
in the Landscape have also been a rich opportunity of multidisciplinary
discussion on memory and amnesia.
I would like to acknowledge Central Saint Martins, University of the Arts
London for the endorsement and support for the research of the book. I am
especially grateful to Prof. Janet MacDonnell, Associate Dean of Research,
for her kind encouragement and to Prof. Jeremy Till, Head of Central Saint
Martins. At Central Saint Martins, the opportunity to share my research with
fi rst and second year students of the MRes Moving Image has been both
inspiring and enriching. My thank you to my colleague Lucy Reynolds, course
leader of the MRes Moving Image. I would also like to thank the colleagues
across the University who shared ideas and research around the archive and its
traces at the Archive Forum that I organized at Central Saint Martins.
Research libraries and archives and staff at the British Library, the
Wellcome Library and Wellcome Film Archive, the BFI Film Archive,
Central Saint Martins British Artists’ Film & Video Study, and the War
Museum Film Archive have been very obliging and cooperative with the
research for the book.
At Palgrave Macmillan I would like to thank Felicity Plester and Sophie
Auld, the editors of the Memory Study Series and the anonymous reader. I
am also grateful to Nicholas Minns for proofreading the text and Samantha
Clark for the index.
v
vi ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
As ever my heart felt gratitude goes to artists and fi lmmakers whose
work has been the inspiration and intellectual guidance of the book for
their generosity, stimulating conversations and invaluable feedback on
early drafts as well as help with illustrations. In particular I thank you Lutz
Becker, Sivan Eyal, Harun Farocki, Bill Fontana, Yervant Gianikian and
Angela Ricci Lucchi, Shona Illingworth and Kerry Tribe. I am also grate-
ful to Antje Ehmann at Harun Farocki GbR.
Thank you to my family and friends for their marvellous help that has
come in many different ways.
C
ONTENTS
1 Memory, Modernity and the Moving Image 1
1.1 Memory: A Modern Concept 4
1.2 Mind and Screen 12
1.3 Moving Memories 2 0
1.4 The Inner Film of the Mind 2 8
1.5 Modern Memory and Its Contingency for the Present 3 2
Notes 3 6
Bibliography 38
2 Mémoir(e) and Mémoire(s) 43
2.1 Autobiographical Memory: A Psychological Model 4 8
2.2 H. M.: A Case of Amnesia 5 2
2.3 The Möbius Strip of Remembering 5 9
2.4 (Auto)Biographical Memory: The M öbius Strip
of Remembering 67
Notes 7 7
Bibliography 78
3 Trauma, Latency and Amnesia 83
3.1 ‘Subincision’: The Cultural Making of Intrusive Memories 86
3.2 ‘Just an Image’: The Watch Man 9 5
3.3 Interference and Memory-Scape: Balnakiel 101
vii
viii CONTENTS
3.4 Amnesiac Environments: Lesions in the Landscape 1 10
3.5 Notes 117
Bibliography 118
4 Sound, Trace and Interference 123
4.1 Sound Traces 1 26
4.2 Memories, Silences and Cultural Remembering 1 32
4.3 Chaining Hidden Memories 137
Notes 142
Bibliography 142
5 Amnesia and the Archive 145
5.1 Archival Memories and the Affect of History 149
5.2 ‘Chemical Amnesia’ and Spectral Memories 161
5.3 Montage of Unremembered Memories:
Harun Farocki and Eyal Sivan 172
Notes 187
Bibliography 189
6 Afterword: Contingency and the Performativity
of Remembering and Forgetting 1 95
Bibliography 198
Selective Bibliography 1 99
Index 2 03
L F
IST OF IGURES
Fig. 1.1 Léonce Perret, T he Mystery of the Rocks of Kador , 1912,
black and white silent fi lm, fi lm still © Musée Gaumont 1 3
Fig. 1.2 Léonce Perret, T he Mystery of the Rocks of Kador , 1912,
black and white silent fi lm, fi lm still © Musée Gaumont 1 4
Fig. 1.3 Robert Wienes, The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari , 1919,
black and white silent fi lm, fi lm still courtesy of a private
collector 19
Fig. 2.1 Kerry Tribe, H .M. , 2009, single 16 mm fi lm with sound,
two projectors with a 20 second delay, fi lm still,
courtesy of the artist © Kerry Tribe 5 5
Fig. 2.2 Kerry Tribe, H .M., 2009, single 16 mm fi lm with sound,
two projectors with a 20 second delay, fi lm still,
courtesy of the artist © Kerry Tribe 5 7
Fig. 2.3 Kerry Tribe, P arnassius mnemosyne , 2010,
16mm möbius fi lm loop, 40 seconds, installation shot
Arnolfi ni Gallery, Bristol, courtesy of the artist
© Kerry Tribe, photo credit Jamie Woodley 62
Fig. 2.4 Kerry Tribe, T he Last Soviet , 2010, color double screen
video with sound, video still, courtesy of the artist
© Kerry Tribe, photo credit Kelly Barrie 7 0
Fig. 2.5 Kerry Tribe, T he Last Soviet , 2010, color double screen
video with sound, video still, courtesy of the artist
© Kerry Tribe 71
Fig. 2.6 Kerry Tribe, M ilton Torres Sees a Ghost, 2010, installation
with audiotape, reel-to-reel players, oscilloscope and framed
documents, installation shot LAXART, Santa Monica,
courtesy of the artist © Kerry Tribe 7 5
ix