g e o g r a f i a f f e t t i v a   t h e G R F e x p e r i e n c e


...the next workshop will take place in collaboration with On Line > http://www.kunstonline.info/ at the RFG (Richard Foncke Gallery > http://www.rfgonline.be) in Ghent (Belgium) in April 2005... for this occasion we want to reflect on the notion of memory and analyse and display what we call a "common memory" in relation to (affective) geography and the kunstonline.info database. by this date the prototype should already be online, so it will be the first workshop that can have a direct influence on the improvement of the geanet-system.

  
how can we remember something if this something is absent? the answer Sokrates gave in a platonic dialog is maybe a cultural sourcecode of what we know about memory > (wo)man, so Sokrates, owns as a gift from Mnemosyne, the mother of all muses, a board of wax, in which memories can imprint themselves like from a signet ring. whatever leaves an impression can be remembered until this impression is fading and oblivion initiates.

looking at geografia affettiva with this platonic spatial view and playing conceptual with its telematic feasibilities provokes some interesting questions and possibilities > do we have - finally - collective wax boards? > is our memory getting “better” because we can outsource it into an artificial kind of screen-brain which doesn’t fade out? or should on the contrary a system like that also have a facility to forget? and first of all > what shall that be: a collective memory?

if memory (Mnemosyne) is the mother of all muses and an individual memory only can be formed via social interaction what happens if this interaction can be mapped and contexts be seen as > a net cartography of these interactions? do our relations change and does our identity? what happens to what we call past and presence? and does the system help to project the future?

during our workshop-week in the RFG we’d like to share these questions with you and leave the result as a kind of spatial memory for the public.

since geografiaffettiva.net was developed in all its questions by bringing them on public tables also our GRF experience will > be translated onto its blog-like website and soon, when we’ll be able+ to play with the prototype, in-formed better. we hope until we meet!

c a l c   02_2005