Memory, Forgetting and the Moving Image

"In Memory, Forgetting and the Moving Image, Caterina Albano achieves a brilliant synthesis of memory theory, from Benjamin and Bergson to Deleuze and Derrida. She breaks new ground in theorizing how the technologies of cinema and sound recording, as well as their combination in installation art, have allowed for innovations-both scientific and aesthetic-in the understanding of memory processes and representations. She argues persuasively for an appreciation of the performative role of memory, and offers original insights into the role of forgetting and traumatic amnesia in the shaping of personal and social identities in the emergent culture(s) of globalization. This is an invaluable contribution to memory studies." (Inez Hedges, Professor of Languages, Literatures and Cultures at Northeastern University and author of World Cinema and Cultural Memory)

Throughout this book we discover what our idea of memory would be without the moving image. This thought provoking analysis examines how the medium has informed modern and contemporary models of memory. The book examines the ways in which cinematic optic procedures inform an understanding of memory processes. Critical to the reciprocity of mind and screen is forgetting and the problematic that it inscribes into memory and its relation to contested histories. Through a consideration of artworks (film/video and sound installation) by artists whose practice has consistently engaged with issues surrounding memory, amnesia and trauma, the book brings to bear neuro-psychological insight and its implication with the moving image (as both image and sound) to a consideration of the global landscape of memory and the politics of memory that inform them. The artists featured include Kerry Tribe, Shona Illingworth, Bill Fontana, Lutz Becker, Yervant Gianikian and Angela Ricci Lucchi, Harun Faorcki, and Eyal Sivan.