Memory

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content: Performing is memory / memory as imagination or conditioning / forgetting as poetic relief or loss of self / multiple selves effecting each other across parallel times / the integration or transcendence of past, present, and future / ancestral memory / the biological memory of body functions / the ethics of memory / the recontextualization of memory / creative constructions of autobiographical memory/ collective embodiment of autobiographical memories / shifts in perception caused by the recycling of memory / how the archive affects the process of memory / the integration of lived and mediated memories. Over the past ten years, the generally accepted understanding of human memory has shifted radically, reflecting popularized articulations of recent advances in the cognitive sciences. These advances are in part a result of new brain imaging technology (MRI) and in part the result of a revived interest in the understandings of memory (established and potential) articulated in phenomenological philosophy and its direct influences (Husserl, Merleau-Ponty, James, Bergson). In simple terms, the mentioned shift is from memory understood as stored experiences, episodes, and knowledge from the past that can be recalled (as memories of the past) to the much more complex understanding that memory is embodied and neural processes of perception that are recycled and changed implicitly when perceiving in the present. While the relationship between cultural memory and theatre has been addressed extensively—by Canadian scholarship in particular—questions of how the dynamics and mechanics of memory inform and act on creative strategies in Canadian dance, performance, and theatre have rarely been raised. This issue of CTR is a response to a junction between this perceived shift in understanding and a growing body of Canadian performance projects that involve artistic questions and strategies of memory. We invited a wide range of artists and scholars to discuss how conceptualizations of memory inform contemporary Canadian performance. Intriguingly, while we received only a small number of academic proposals, we were inundated by enthusiastic responses and pitches from practitioners (so many as to make the selection process a very difficult one). As is evident from our final roster of articles, simplistic and outdated understandings of memory are hugely challenged and split open by practices that are acutely aware of memory as a complex process that affects artists and audiences in multiple ways. When teasing out the routes by which the different contributors approach memory, an exciting network of interconnected themes arises—one that has the power and potential to pry apart questions about how and what performance processes can affect. This evocative network does not have a beginning or centre; our introduction, however, must of necessity choose a point of entry. The understanding that performing is memory is most explicitly addressed in Maiko Bae Yamamoto's piece on Theatre Replacement's production-in-process Dress me up in your love. Her creative team is challenged by the dilemma that even when delivering unscripted and in-part improvised material, the act of performing repeats and often dilutes discoveries of compelling connections to source material initially made in rehearsal. When this source material, furthermore, is a collection of emotional and personal memories associated with "Outfits of Significance" (donated by others or the performers themselves), the layers of repetition and possible dilution multiply. Accepting the act of repeating memory as a condition of performance, but deliberately troubling the notion of presence, Ame Henderson asks how a performer can "be 'in the moment' while also processing what has happened before and [...] projecting towards the moment that has not yet arrived?" One attempt at a solution is found in the "Performance Recipe" of 300 TAPES, in which Henderson's Public Recordings outlines reusable performance generating systems and compositional procedures. Another can be discovered in the performer Marie Claire Forté and dramaturge Jacob Zimmer's discussion of relay, a dance project also directed by Henderson. In these projects, Henderson and her collaborators devise performance strategies of retelling personal stories or remembering movements danced in the past based in the understanding that the act of remembering is "a function mostly of our imaginations." When Henderson connects this understanding with "the impossibility of repetition in spite of our best efforts," her position resonates directly with the neurobiologist Gerald Edelman's thoughts on the inevitable reconstructive and transformative nature...