Performing Memory

We learn to perform our memory
We learn to perform our forgetting

If we think about how history becomes important to us
personally, how an event from the past becomes embodied,
we venture into the domain of memory. For memory
surely is our personal echo chamber to the past. There
are the obvious remains of the past, the archives of
important objects and the historical records, but even
when we think about our knowledge of these, how we
approach and understand them, we must also think about
how we perform the equation between past and present,
between materials and events that shape them and how
our performative relationship to history is often based on
what remains, but also on what remains differently as it is
embodied through the act of remembering.(GOULISH M:2001)