Dream Spaces – Memory and the Museum. Gaynor Kavanagh, 2000, Leicester University Press. P 3
What is Memory?
Within our hard yet brittle skulls rests the brain, soft grey matter fundamental to our existence. Scientists believe that within the brain lies the secret of our consciousness, the very thing that gives purpose and shape to our capacity to live. Susan Greenfield has described consciousness as arising from ‘a kaleidoscope of memories, prejudices, hopes, habits and emotions which are constantly expanding and enriching your life as you develop’ (Greenfield, 1995: 1). This is an inner world, private and largely inaccessible to anyone but ourselves, which engages with the outer world but remains separate from it. It is alive with images, scenarios, feelings and fantasies, shifting yet real. Aspects are held much deeper, in what is called the subconscious or unconscious, which has been described as having no vocabulary as we would understand it, but as experienced through ‘mainly pictures, images and sounds which, without much ado, change their meaning or merge into one another’ (Balint, 1968: 97). Within our consciousness and from this our minds, rational and irrational thought co-exists.
It is almost impossible to think of ourselves without the capacity to recall, to be conscious yet mentally unaided. Our memories give us the ability to accept it is morning or night, remember our home addresses, recognize our friends, recall pieces of information about our work, …So much of what we take for granted such as walking or lifting up a cup at some stage in our lives had to be learned and the information stored to be used again and again.
Dream Spaces – Memory and the Museum. Gaynor Kavanagh, 2000, Leicester University Press. P 9
We literally remember ourselves in all our conscious acts, a process that is continuously rehearsed, modified and played out. Every time we repeat an action or bring something to mind (however small) we are underlining, reinforcing and buttressing the subjective sense of self. Having a memory which is satisfying grounds the self and is the basis of both personal and interpersonal action. Though it we examine, within ourselves and with those we trust, something about who we are.
Dream Spaces – Memory and the Museum. Gaynor Kavanagh, 2000, Leicester University Press. P 10
Neurobiologists believe that when we learn or experience something there must be electrical and chemical changes in the brain, although no one totally agrees on what those changes are studies of memory capacity, for example, may help plot neural changes, i.e. what happens in the brain on the point where a memory is formed, but has not yet helped explain what happens when memory id prompted or how that memory is accessed. Nevertheless, it is accepted that memory is a kind of ingestion that can be retrieved if appropriate prompts are given (Gregory, 1987; Rose, 1992). The ways in which these prompts work and the individuality of retrieval, interpretation and response based on a lifetime of associations, moves the study from the physical to the phenomenological. Greenfield has described memory not as an ‘add-on brain accessory but a cornerstone of holistic and cohesive consciousness’, incapable of being divorced from the subjective stance of the individual (Greenfield, 1997a). In other words, our memories are us and they come in many forms.
Dream Spaces – Memory and the Museum. Gaynor Kavanagh, 2000, Leicester University Press. P 11
What we understand about the making of memories is that they are context-dependant and highly sensory. The ways in which we came to remember something in the first place can lead us back to that memory at a much later point in time. The term for this is ‘encodement specificity’ (Tulving, 1975, 1983) the cue can be audio (an old song), visual (a faded photograph), association with smell (engine oil) or it can be a feeling (fear or contentment). In museums, the cue is sometimes a tactile one. The sensory experience of weighing something in ones hand or moving ones fingers over its surfaces can release memories that have lain dormant.
Our senses substantially aid our access to and absorption into memory. This is because in our daily lives we constantly use them to explore and measure our encounters. They are the systems through which we participate in life, and through them we gain admittance to perception and judgement. Very little of this happens with our full awareness.
Dream Spaces – Memory and the Museum. Gaynor Kavanagh, 2000, Leicester University Press. P 14
Collections of Objects, or Memories?
To take just one theoretical approach as a case in this point: Csikszentmihalyi (1993) discusses how in his view artefacts allow us to objectify the self and give our minds the opportunity for self-regulation. They are the external props to our consciousness. He contends that they operate in our lives in three ways. First, to demonstrate the ‘owner’s power, vital erotic energy and place in the social hierarchy’ – everything from the kind of car you drive to the cut of your suit would qualify here. Second, ‘objects reveal the continuity of self through time, by providing foci of involvement in the present, mementoes and souvenirs of the past, and signposts to the future’ – here we could include everything from a baby’s first tooth lovingly kept to a CD which contains a deeply meaningful track. Third, objects give concrete evidence of ones place in a social network as symbols (literally the joining together) of valued relationships – perhaps everything from a boy scouts badge to a set of golf clubs and a Rotary pen would apply here. Csikszentmihalyi argues that ‘in these three ways objects stabilise out sense of who we are’ (1993: 23)
The sense of who we are may be full of contradictions and ambiguities however, so much so that placing material in the categories would be confusing.
Perhaps Csikszentmihalyi is right in that the precariousness of our consciousness is such that we have to externalise and do this through objects, which in turn become the props of our existence. We cannot be in just our bodies alone, we have to express our internal and conscious selves through things. This is both the beauty and peril of life. Yet we do not just externalise through things alone but perhaps more powerfully through actions, expressions and movements…. A story told by the fireside can be as equally an important expression of ourselves and our state of consciousness; but it is not necessarily concrete.
Dream Spaces – Memory and the Museum. Gaynor Kavanagh, 2000, Leicester University Press. P 103 – 104
By the same token objects may associated with a very strong sense of identity. Ploughs on display at the agricultural galleries of Ulster Folk and Transport Museum have no meaning whatsoever to city children from Belfast. But elderly men who spent their working lives on the land have been known to step over the barriers in the urgent need to touch and handle these things once again. As they do so, stories emerge of the pride in their work, the difficulties associated with it and reflections on the changes. The act is spontaneous: to touch and recall the feel of an object meaningfully associated with work and the self-esteem it brought.
Dream Spaces – Memory and the Museum. Gaynor Kavanagh, 2000, Leicester University Press. P 106
For the human species, just like any other, the primary need is to survive and reproduce. Yet people spend time and derive pleasure from activities that seem pointless. Indeed, telling stories, reciting poetry, decorating surfaces, and remembering things that have no survival value are aspects of our humanity. Pinker (1999) asks what it is about the mind that lets people take pleasure in shapes and colours and sounds and stories and myths? His answer is that the brain allows the senses in particular to engage in such delights as a means of lifting the capacity for instruction and cognitive adoption. Thus sex is so much more potent when love is involved and love is an emotion stimulated greatly by the senses. Eating is so much more pleasurable where the taste buds are stimulated, and living is so much more comfortable and secure if the shelter is not just a shelter but a personalized home. In other words, we are even better at reproduction and survival if we are also capable of engagement with the dream spaces, and three trillion synapses in the brain are the guarantee of this.
Eastern philosophy has some interesting contributions to make. The Yoga sutras of Patanjali are thought to date from at least AD 300, and may possibly be older. In these, Patanjali wrote of the five aspects (vritti) of the mind: right knowledge, wrong knowledge, imagination (or imaginary knowledge), sleep (no knowledge), and memory (past knowledge). Memory id further divided into conscious memory, that is, the recollections of things already experienced, and subconscious memory that is dream, where one does not consciously remember but remember unconsciously. The memory may be of two kinds: one imaginary, the other real. In this philosophy every dream has a basis and no dream is baseless. Swami Satyanda Saraswati explains that memory, memory, in particular subconscious memory, brings out ‘the impressions of the preconscious and unfolds them on the conscious plane’ and that this is one of the faculties of our consciousness (Saraswati, 1989: 59)
This philosophy contends that enlightenment lies within and not outside ourselves. Sri Swami Satchidananda has this to say:
Turning inside means turning the senses within: trying to hear something within, see something within, smell something within. All scents are within us. All beautiful music is within us. All art is inside us. Why should we search, running after museums and gardens, when every museum and garden is inside of us?
(Satchidananda, 1978: 123)
Perhaps this may point the way to understanding the dream space which people find in museums. It is where our inner experiences find a mesh with outer experiences which museums provide.
Dream Spaces – Memory and the Museum. Gaynor Kavanagh, 2000, Leicester University Press. P 175
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