Hello Nettime,
What keeps recurring in my thoughts these days is the deep-rooted
significance of collective memory; for any people who have a long
history of oppression collective memory is indelible. Amongst Jewish
people the Holocaust is part their collective memory: whether or not
they are Zionists. For Palestinians the Nakba is part of their
collective memory; not only the Nakba but the betrayal by British
colonialists. For African Americans the realities of slavery is part of
their collective memory. For any people confronted with and forced to
endure the dehumanisation and injustices of colonialism, the social
injustices and imbalances, collective memory is not something that is
easily, if ever, erased.
Collective memory, oral traditions and the internet… like collective
memories, oral traditions don’t disappear, they are transformed and
reignited using new and different forms of media. What appears, in
voices and words, is both personal and communal: pain, suffering,
sadness, happiness, joy - a living archive of past inequities and
dreams. Our diverse digital initiatives, our communal digital spaces,
play a significant role in maintaining collective memory and nourishing
oral traditions.
Access to an assortment of communication tools facilitate the sharing of
information and ideas that enable discursive environments and that
sustain a fragile public sphere. The importance of this public sphere,
and its ability to resist corporate appropriation, appears during times
of extreme crisis such as the present. An avalanche of lies, ahistorical
arguments, and a silencing of voices results in a distorted picture of
political motives and a storm of propaganda. Most alarmingly, amongst
the political classes engineering (and profiting) from the catastrophes
in the Middle East, Ukraine and less visible nightmares, there is an
endless stream of platitudes mourning the human consequences of war. But
who will pick up the pieces? Who will rebuild? Who will give solace to
the enduring emotional trauma?
These multiple crises remind us that silence is not really an option; to
shatter the silence we need resilient and imaginative media resources
able to navigate a myriad of political and economic obstacles.
best
allan
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