Circulating memories: how far can images reach?

It is possible to move memories of a certain event or incident to different places, in the form of an image like a drawing or a photograph. Sometimes there is potential to reach someone beyond time, and outside the limits of physical space. When someone’s memories are given form, this also stimulates the memories of the person engaging with them. The images in front of you bring your own experiences to life, experiences which overlap with those of another. Acts that impart new meaning enrich the existence of images, and at the same time have led to the passing-on of one incident or event, and the common experience it suggests. However, practices enabling this to happen are not easy. Ingenuity is required.

How far can an image go to reach someone unknowable and distant? What sort of method can we use for that? And what can be shared with others via images in the first place? These are the fundamental questions when attempting to convey amorphous memories through some sort of documentation or media; questions that are also dangerous and fraught with difficulty from the moment they are posed.

Keeping these questions in mind, for this discussion we welcome two guests with accumulated experience in practices concerning everyday images and memories: Yukinori Okamura of the Maruki Gallery For The Hiroshima Panels, and remo – record, expression and medium organization member / AHA! Project manager, Atsushi Matsumoto. Our guests will share with event participants their initiatives and awareness of the issues, and explore the possibilities for methodologies of practice in future.

*Image: “Scenes with Hanako” collection (Kichijōji Art Museum, 2017) When you turn over the actual-size reproduction of the photo on the back cover, the person and the elephant appear to be just touching over the moat barrier.