By Heather Duncan

There is nothing more sacred than one's own memory. The mangled threads of experience hidden within the folds of the mind are unique, effective and each individuals memory or recollection or mental archive is for that matter, valid. The challenge however then becomes, if we are to revere all memory as valid we must then decide in what capacity we are to respect memory and in what capacity are we to believe it as truth? What can and should we store away in our internal private archive, taking on another memory as our own?

We will never truly be able to understand or furthermore comprehend the complexity of a firsthand memory of trauma from a horrific historical event such as the Holocaust. Humans make reason by organizing and grouping and what some, including Brenda Dervin calls “sense-making”. Dervin, a professor at Ohio State University whose research led to the development of the Sense-Making Approach says..

"embodied in materiality and soaring across time-space ...a body-mind-heart-spirit living in time-space, moving from a past, in a present, to a future, anchored in material conditions; yet at the same time with an assumed capacity to sense-make abstractions, dreams, memories, plans, ambitions, fantasies, stories pretenses that can both transcend time space and last beyond specific moments of time space."

If we want to continue to pass this history on and keep in contained within the archive and still relevant today it is pertinent that we make this information accessible and while it should not be a replacement for the original work the remixed collections of history should be considered a concrete and influential informative piece used to make sense of something that should and does make sense to no one. 

While viewing and reflecting on the video remixes of holocaust survivor tapes from the Shoah foundation I feel that again while they are not substitutes for the real thing they can serve as a tool to emphasize or create discussion around an idea, an event or simply a feeling one wishes to convey. 

If we cease to tell and re-tell stories they will die off and be replaced with a new set of memories and accounts. While it is not perfect and may never be perfect there is an importance of continuing to have conversation and thought surrounding the archives of humanity. This is crucial if we wish to have any hope for preserving the archived fibers of the past so that they may influence and affect the archives of the future. 

Looking at Archives of Trauma and Transformation we can clearly see the incorporation of various kinds of archives to enhance the impact of the pieces highlighting stories and history.

The interesting benefit of this form of new media is the reach that it can provide. A remixed video such as Jason Lipshin's, "The Voice of Testimony" (IML 340 Final Project) - with testimonies from the Shoah Foundation's Visual History Archive can provide impact through an abstract piece to someone who might not have the ability to venture into the Shoah Foundation Archive. 

Arguably it can alternatively have a negative impact should the remixer create a false sense of the original sentiment or — but this could really be argued about forever. 

Despite the pain that comes with recalling and recording trauma we must talk and we must think and we must archive, archive, archive if we hope to have any chance at avoiding the destruction of memory. I will leave you with this quote by T.D. Wilson in his paper exploring the phenomenological sociology of Alfred Schutz, with particular reference to his concern to understand the social distribution of knowledge in society.

"Our experience of the world, upon which our thoughts about the world are based, is intersubjective because we experience the world with and through others. Whatever meaning we create has its roots in human action, and the totality of social artifacts and cultural objects is grounded in human activity."