The Shaping of Memory (Die Gestaltung der Erinnerung)

How do you remember?

The Goethe-Institut Washington is initiating a programming series that explores memory culture and relationships with the past through various forms of artistic, academic, and activist expression.

The Shaping of Memory (Gestaltung der Erinnerung) is an event series on the topic of collective memory and the connections between abstract remembrance and the ways we express remembrance in concrete forms – alone or in groups, repeatedly or seldom, with anger or with sadness, joy, or a combination of many emotions. The Shaping of Memory seeks to encourage critical engagement with the past – and especially our attitudes toward the construction (or re- or deconstruction) of the past – and examine the many personal definitions of memory in a society where it becomes increasingly evident that history is not objective, and neither is memory.

Beginning with the March 20 opening of German artist Marc Beckmann’s photography exhibit, Anniversaries (Die Jahrestage), the Goethe-Institut Washington will be meditating on this theme with a variety of workshops and discussions, guest speakers and artists, and gatherings that encourage participants to explore how they personally relate to memory.