WEDNESDAY 17 NOVEMBER 18:00 - 20:30

ALEJANDRO SIMÓN

How to Remember What You Have Never Lived

Can someone else’s memory become your own? What about collectively?

The language of narratives of the past relies on sources and is made up of written and spoken texts. From an academic perspective, these are the primary sources: books, scientific and entertainment magazines, newspapers, journals, official documents, technical and research reports, patents, technical regulations. And, secondary sources include: encyclopaedias, anthologies, directories, books or articles that interpret other people’s work or research. 

But memories are not just a matter of the past. Remembering something is an act and, therefore, an experience, a development, a desire, an emotion, an urge, sadness, awakening, work, the coexistence of the past and the future. If history tends to follow a line, sometimes a very straight one, like the horizon, a memory is a sea.

Alejandro Simón is a researcher, artist and professor at the Salamanca Fine Arts Faculty. He has been part of MINECO’s “Critical Visualities: cultural ecologies and common research” and “Critical Visualities: rewriting narratives through images” R&D groups based at the Complutense University of Madrid. His works have been published by Brumaria, and Archivos Bellaterra, among others.