Yota Argyropoulou: Memory Rehearsals

Inspired by the scientific technique of «memory rehearsal», which involves the construction and recalling of a memory, my artistic research will explore processes and techniques of remembering. Inherent as it is ‘rehearsal’ in the performing process of creation, this technique will be the starting point to explore remembering tactics of the human body and mind, through the process of repetition which helps the information/event get processed and stored as a memory. By revisiting selective personal and collective memories, I will explore how the performative body recreates a real/fictional memory, with all the different fragmented elements, versions, formulations and possibilities of the specific events.

Using as a starting point material drawn from major and minor, important or trivial, local or global socio-political events, as they unfold and blend in parallel with our personal stories and emotions, those two will come together in my research to unite through the human performative body in space and the traces left behind.

Re-inventing the technique of «memory rehearsal» and applying it to the performing act, my artistic research will explore the mechanism of memory and how it registers and forms (im)materialy in our body and self. How can we access this personal/social body of memory and what new knowledge can it grant us with?