About Remembering as an Information Activist

Text: Julia Nitschke Translation: Good and Cheap Art Translators

Das war der Anfang des Slogans Be a Public Historian.

Later kamen andere Projekte – Hybridity, Arbeiten in Schichten, Exophony etc. – entstanden. Ich glaube schon, dass es mir in den letzten vier Jahren einigermaßen gelungen ist, die Agenda voranzutreiben und die alberne Debatte überflüssig zu machen. Und das could only happen, weil viele von Ihnen, lokale Künstler, Aktivisten, Schriftsteller, Denker mir vertraut haben und Projektpartner wurden.

Ich denke, dieser Geist soll in dieser Ausgabe repräsentiert werden. Nicht as nostalgische voyage oder Projektbericht or gar as a goodbye von mir, sondern als Ihre persönliche (etwas subjektive) Sicht auf das Konzept, dass das Lokale nicht provinziell ist. Maybe erwähnen Sie darin nicht once das AkademieProjekt. Aber Ihre Erfahrung, die vielfältigen Geschichten und unearthing the legacy of feminist movements, kann als nächste Idee/Agenda angesprochen will be. Dann sind Sie natürlich ein kreativer Autor und werden Ihre eigene Note einbringen. Ich say also nothing about the form.

1. It is well known that our brain deceives us in our memories – more often than we would like. The brain is masterful in overwriting our memories in a desired direction.

When there is ostensible evidence, such as photographs, the impression of this overwritten memory grows stronger with each retelling. It ends up being true. 2. Although our memories are fluid, we may and must make reference to them in court. 3. Although they are fluid, they are our anchor in being in the present. An assurance of our being. 4. Eva always quotes Carolyn Dinshaw and says, the archival material opens up a “community across time”. 5. Without archives, there would be no evidence of the past. 6. Archives are instruments of power. 7. Archives are the normative collective memory. 8. Without archives from below, there would only be the norm in collective memory. Without archives, we would swirl in a vacuum endlessly.

Generation after generation would have to start from scratch with this work. 9. Larger than the evidence in all the archives are the gaps of all the materials not recorded.

And yet we can’t let go. 10. Larger yet is the gap created by a lack of perspective. Every generation anew. And that is only noticed from the outside. 11. Without care workers, these memories would not be activated. 12. Archivists maintain and take care of the structure. The people who use the material and bring it to the outside world are information activists. 13. They embody the energy of retrieving, touching, finding. Memories fall ‘into their hands’ and through them they are remembered and brought to life. 14. The material unfolds its full value in its activation. 15. Each visit to the archives removes a new layer of knowledge. 16. Every knowledge generates new ignorance. 17. Each revival of the material is a repetition; and yet it can never be duplicated. 18. This information is emotional data to fall in love with, to argue with, to argue about. 19. They are the missing ingredient to imagine the future. 20. They are work on the collective memory.