Memory texts and memory work: Performances of memory in and with visual media

Abstract

This essay focuses on re-enactments of the past through performances of memory both in and with visual media, and looks at how these may embody, express, work through, and even unpick, interconnections between the private, the public and the personal. It explores some questions around visual media/visual discourses, memory and collective identity by looking at filmic and photographic examples from England, Scotland, Canada and China. It also raises some questions around appropriate research methodologies and about how institutions such as museums and archives may figure in some of these collective activities, practices and performances.