Brain Food #431
What makes a memory
Daily Brain Food.
Thoughts of the day
What makes a memory, and can we still create worthwhile memories without new experiences?
Visual artist Bernadette Mayer spent three years of her life taking a photo of each day. At the end, she had accumulated 1,100 stills, which she displayed in an installation aptly named Memory.
We are used to creating milestones, and celebrating events by moving between spaces and doing unique activities reserved for each specific event. When we want to go on holiday, we go someplace new. When we want to have a nice dinner, we go to a restaurant. When we want to celebrate a big event with our community, we go out in squares, or on the top of a hill to watch fireworks. We have connected experiences to places and activities. All of these have been taken away from us, temporarily but for an undetermined amount of time.
But that does not necessarily prevent us from making new memories or having worthwhile experiences. If we cannot find something obviously new in the everyday, we need to create it, and without the outside to offer it, we must start to look within.
The photographs in Mayer’s work have already started to fade. Little will remain of them, apart from the feeling that intrinsically came with being in that moment.
