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Heather Parnell Two Worlds 2010

"I’ve been wondering if it is possible to put the present and the past in the same shelving space, both worlds existing in parallel, using memorabilia and everyday objects as the metaphors for these remembered and lived experiences. My shelves at home do this, there are objects dotted around my kitchen that are part of my past life, and new things that have a place in this recent one. Putting the cocoons in a space with real objects is an exploration of how to present  the here and now, in relation to a past that exists only in memories. Here, now and then."

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I suddenly realised that if other people felt as I did then I'd got the solution. Here were things which could create anew the whole fun, colour, charms, nonsense and even bitterness of everyone's past.

Patrick Murray

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MUSEUM OF CHILDHOOD

-Edinburgh

 Created by Patrick Murray (1908 - 1981). He was an avid collector and hoarder, and his own childhood mementoes increasingly began to trigger all sorts of memories and feelings about childhood, prompting the idea of a museum to preserve and celebrate children's culture.

  There were many displays of objects grouped together, in categories such as Play, Food, Education, juxtaposed in order to provoke association and memories among viewers, just like the original Wunderkammer.

   The whole museum was a big inspiration for me, mostly because of the shared feeling of nostalgia between myself, Murray, and visitors to the museum. It made me realise that the memory loss from childhood is a universal one; something everyone experiences and can relate to, something everyone can relate to. Museums like this one are popular as they allow people to regress and recall memories they had once forgotten.

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Heather Parnell Two Worlds 2010

"I’ve been wondering if it is possible to put the present and the past in the same shelving space, both worlds existing in parallel, using memorabilia and everyday objects as the metaphors for these remembered and lived experiences. My shelves at home do this, there are objects dotted around my kitchen that are part of my past life, and new things that have a place in this recent one. Putting the cocoons in a space with real objects is an exploration of how to present  the here and now, in relation to a past that exists only in memories. Here, now and then."

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Heather Parnell - working with traces of personal objects with associative memory

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multiple layers of photos, with the face torn out

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Rubin, Wetzler and Nebes

MEMORY CHANGES WITH AGE; the temporal distribution of autobiographical memories across the lifespan, as modelled by Rubin, Wetzler and Nebes (1986), is separated into three components: 1. Childhood or infantile amnesia

2. The retention function (recency effect)

3. The reminiscence bump

Infantile amnesia concerns memories from very early childhood, before age 6; very few memories before age 3 are available.

The retention function is the recollection of events in the first 20 to 30 years in an individual's life. This results in more memories for events closest to the present, a recency effect.

Finally, there is the reminiscence bump occurring after around age 40, marked by an increase in the retrieval of memories from ages 10 to 30.

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Autobiographical memory researchers are unsure as to WHY we do not remember much from the first few years of our lives. Bauer's theory is that the development of the brain at those early stages means that memories formed at ages 0 - 8 are forgotten more easily and quickly.

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Max Ernst

Frottage - taking rubbings of different surfaces and combining them to make something new

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Episodic Memories

ENCODED (information changed into memory) : receiving, processing and combining of information - object and interpretation into MONOPRINT

STORED (retaining the memory) : creation of a permanent record of encoded information - monoprint into SCULPTURE

RETRIEVED (to our consciousness) : stored information is recalled in response to something - sculpture into OUTCOME

plan of action...

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Memory

Academic theories about how we make sense of the world:

Availability Heuristic: recent events seem more likely

Choice-supportive bias: Distorting memories to make decisions seem good

Counterfactual Thinking: We can change our own memories

False Memory Syndrome: We can create memories that are false

False Recognition: Words can change what we remember

Fatigue: The effects of tiredness

Hindsight Bias: we pretend we remembered everything

Imagined Memory: Is not as detailed and sensory as  real memory

Mood memory: We recall things that match our current mood

Network Theory: Our minds have linked nodes of two types: semantic and affective

Primacy Effect: we remember what happened first

Recency Effect: we remember recent things

Schema: used to interpret memories

Von Restorff Effect: we remember things that stands out

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I'm interested in things that are outside or beyond recognition, whether that means cultural invisibility, or to do with the notion of what a person is

Susan Hiller

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Susan Hiller Sentimental Representations in Memory of my Grandmothers

Panels built from rose petals. Placing these petals was an act of love - both of Hiller's Grandmothers were called Rose. These petals are metonymic symbols and substitutions of women Hiller has loved and lost. She seems to be repeatedly naming her Grandmothers, summoning them from the fragmented detail of their names, using objects like words. These petals are materials from which whole sentences, stories and lives may be structured. It makes the viewer see the world as something that is full of potential, rather than received meaning.

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Susan Hiller - Monument 1980 - 81

41 colour photographs, park bench, audio program.

” … Death belongs in our society to the darkness of night, to the repressions of sleep, and dream. Hiller’s tape partakes of the language of dream, where the identity of the speaker is inconstant, lost and retrieved… The installation itself with its pale blue and brown tablets and its economy of placements is very beautiful. The connection between the mute, somber images and the elusive, allusive wanderings of the text is fascinating in its provocations: the atmosphere of the piece and the ruminations it engenders stay in one’s head for a long while.”

Tony Godfrey, Artscribe, 1981

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everything changes inevitably

Susan Hiller

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AFTER THE FREUD MUSEUM

Susan Hiller, 1995

This book is a companion to Susan Hiller at the Freud Museum, an installation that was originally commissioned by Book Works. Hiller’s witty and erudite commentary is a response to Sigmund Freud’s astonishing personal collection of art and antiquities, his library, his consulting room (including the famous couch) at his last home, in London. The book presents a series of archaeological collection boxes, and through turning the pages the reader embarks on a personal journey that discloses the secrets of each box.

Out of print.

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Susan Hiller