c. indirect, when the images are taken from the relative past of other generations. [Szumski, 2000, p. 9]5 The first and second mentioned types refer directly to the promotion of artist or their image, the third – the memory management of it, because the first two refer to the present day, the last – to the past, which correlates with Wieslaw Sztumski’s dynamic model of time, according to which the past is seen through memory, timeliness – perception, future – waiting. [Sztumski, 2000, p. 11] Indirect (absolute) memory can deform the message for various reasons, which reaches out to audiences already transformed (intentionally or not) through intermediaries, it may also require the rules of interpretation which are not legible for all. In other words, what is stored in memory, is constantly subjected to the processes of selection and interpretation and depends on many factors: the frequency, purpose and way of remembering, reinterpreting, cultural influences, or updating. In order not to distort the artist’s image in the transmission of memory from relative to absolute and to avoid its instrumentalization, it should be, as Aleida Assmann [2009, pp. 106-107] underlined, submitted to public criticism, reflection and discussion. Especially because these images are numerous, and each may seek to achieve social acceptance. Objects from the absolute past do not recall themselves, they need – places of memory, the more creative, the more capable to transform existing pictures memory of an artist. Figures of memory, if they take forms familiar from everyday life, will be most understandable to the recipient. [Welzer, 2008, p. 45] It seems very important to update and put the forms of commemoration into the structures of current media messages, comprehensible for contemporaries. The past is seen by the members of the community through the categories and patterns that are relevant to their culture and time. [Burke, 1989, p. 99] In order to recall facts from absolute memory, we mostly reach for the ready–made patterns, known from elsewhere, from literature, film, press, to which the recipient is used and from which knows what to expect. Each image, which is distinctive from those commonly known, causes the recipients’ discomfort, breaking their habits of perception. [Welzer, 2008, p. 45]
Aleida Assmann [2009, p. 106] points out that cultural texts, constituting knowledge and memory of the community, are clear only in the context of other texts, so the forms of commemoration of an artist also need to resign of demanding completeness, and it seems appropriate to use other cultural messages and mutual complementarity. It raises the question of centralized memory management of an artist, which would allow to avoid duplication in content and form of memory figures. If the shared knowledge, connecting an individual with a particular community (a nation or region) is lost, the bond between generations is broken.6 Memory can be alive, passed down from generation to generation as family stories, anecdotes, letters or diaries, but more often it is replaced by t h e m e d i a m e m o r y, which primarily uses various forms of commemoration: archives, museums, memorials et al. Memory management can concern remembrance, cultural acts of remembering, forgetting, perpetuating, and references to the past and designing the past. [Assman A., 2009, p. 118] We do not remember about the particular artist all the time, sometimes we hear about him almost everywhere, television programs, radio shows, movies, books, exhibitions are created, however, there is also a time, when the artist is pushed into the background, and a different author comes to the fore, whether through film, the year of jubilee, or unknown works discovered. It seems important to commemorate those that have persisted unchanged – monuments, archives, places named after the artist. Moreover, these memory figures are more reliable than, for example movies or shows, whose life is much shorter.
MEMORY AND PROMOTION
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e perceive an artist as a group, as members of the community, because they co–create our identity and express ideas common to us all. Still the question remains an unsolved problem: an artist, it means who? or what? A man, their biography? Creativity? The impact on other artists? Place in the artistic trend? Do we remember Stanislaw Przybyszewski as a scandalizer, the husband of beautiful and unhappy Dagna Przybyszewska,
5 According to the researcher [Sztumski, 2000, p. 13], we can experience only relative past, we can study the absolute past, but we cannot live through it. 6 Aleida Assmann uses the term cultural tradition. [2009, p. 103].
Culture Management 2012, Vol 5 (5)