Cilliní: (Re)addressing the past in the present

Scene ◽  
2020 ◽  
Vol 8 (1-2) ◽  
pp. 175-193
Author(s):  
Victoria Allen ◽  
Joe Duffy ◽  
Garret Scally
Keyword(s):  
Virtual Reality ◽  
Cultural Memory ◽  
Interdisciplinary Approach ◽  
Short Film ◽  
Historic Sites ◽  
Arts Based Research ◽  
The Past ◽  
Spatial Narrative ◽  
The Subject ◽  
Unbaptized Infants

This article examines the ‘Cilliní’ project’s interdisciplinary approach of research and filmmaking practice to explore the phenomena of cilliní. The project has created artwork that investigates and visualizes landscapes and provides a spatial narrative on the subject of cilliní, which were historic sites in Ireland used for the burial of ‘unfortunates’, principally stillborn and unbaptized infants. The article draws on the material created and experiences involved in making the short film The Lament and creating a virtual reality installation, Cilliní Tales, which, respectively, employ the technologies and approaches of drone and 360° camera filmmaking. As the article combines the perspectives of digital storytelling, cultural memory and a consideration of the ethics of undertaking such a project, it is written in the form of a triptych. This article addresses how the (re)visitings and difficult enquiries of arts-based research in the ‘Cilliní’ project contribute to an ongoing social, political and ethical reappraisal of cilliní and the implications of (re)addressing the past in the present.

scholarly journals Queering Cultural Memory Through Technology: Transitional Spaces in AR and VR

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Maud Ceuterick
Keyword(s):  
Virtual Reality ◽  
Augmented Reality ◽  
Collective Memory ◽  
Cultural Memory ◽  
Media Theory ◽  
Cultural Symbols ◽  
Transitional Spaces ◽  
The Subject ◽  
Queer Phenomenology ◽  
With Memory

While cinema boasts of a long history that has placed the representation and aesthetics of memory at its center, virtual reality (VR) and augmented reality (AR) are only starting to shape their own aesthetic and narrative engagement with memory. Through the analysis of Chez Moi (Caitlin Fisher and Tony Vieira, 2014), Queerskins: Ark (Illja Szilak, 2020), and Homestay (Paisley Smith, 2018), this essay shows how cinematic AR and VR involve the viewers’ movement to produce and transform collective memory and spatial habitation. Feminist digital geographies, film and media theory, and the concept of orientation developed by Sara Ahmed in Queer Phenomenology give sense to how sound, images and viewers’ movement participate in rewriting collective memory and cultural symbols. As these artworks present personal memories of struggles to find a home within present spaces, they queer hegemonic orientations of the subject, and invite viewers to realign body and space within ever-changing virtual and digital spaces.

Gatekeepers of (Non-)Knowledge: Aleksei Balabanov’s Morphine (2008)

2016 ◽  
Author(s):  
Vlad Strukov
Keyword(s):  
Cultural Memory ◽  
The Self ◽  
The Other ◽  
Cultural Discourse ◽  
The Past ◽  
The Future ◽  
The Subject ◽  
Self Organisation ◽  
The Continuum

Balabanov’s Morphine is concerned with cultural memory conceived as a continuum; not as identity but rather subjectivity in construction. The concepts relates to Badiou’s study of subjectivity. It determines existence in a world where the horizon of knowledge is always disappearing and is never available to us in its integrity whereby the subject is barred from the infinite. Different directions and speeds of movement generate the transcendental subject in that the subject is in relation to the variations of the lived. One of such states implies a continuum, or becoming without determination, whilst the other, refers to the imperative to construct knowledge out of the elements of the continuum. Such assemblages, rituals and rites allow the subject to access the ‘beyond’, a different realm, where the elements of the past are positioned towards the future. The transcendence of the subject is coded as an unstoppable flow of imagery—a hallucination—divided into sequences by reiterations and references to the cultural discourse: an introspective vision produces not self-organisation but self-destruction as the subject becomes aware of its own infiniteness. I showcase how Balabanov’s Morphine captures the brutality of such openings and the self-annihilating impact of nothingness.

scholarly journals Representation of image of the past in modern Russian historical fiction films

2020 ◽  
pp. 12-26
Author(s):  
Natalia Aleksandrovna Lysova
Keyword(s):  
Material Culture ◽  
Historical Fiction ◽  
Interdisciplinary Approach ◽  
Historical Period ◽  
Research Attention ◽  
The Past ◽  
Historical Processes ◽  
The Subject ◽  
Time Accuracy ◽  
Historical Past

This article examines the problems of representation of images of the past in modern historical fiction film and TV series. The relevance of the topic is substantiated by current popularity of this genre of cinematography among audience. The younger generation refers to the historical fiction films as an easy-to-grasp source of information on the historical facts, events, processes and personalities. However, such trend carries a threat of disorientation of mass audience regarding the historical past. The article analyzes the concept of “image”, “artistic image”, “image of the past” and their specific features in the context of the subject of research. Attention is turned to complexity of interrelation of the concept of “historical film” and the introduced into mass media terminology stable lexical construct “pseudohistorical film”. The combination of two approaches became the foundation for this research: culturological approach allowed viewing the degree of representation of images of the mast in historical fiction cinematography; while multifaceted nature of the subject of research and versatility of theoretical and empirical materials suggest referring to interdisciplinary approach. Based on the analysis of modern historical fiction feature films and TV series, the author highlights the criteria that allows assessing the adequacy of image of the past and historical reality depicted on the screen. Such criteria include: veracity of reconstruction of material culture of a specific historical period; events and occurrences, social and historical processes of the reproduced historical time; accuracy of interpretation of mentality of a particular cultural-historical period; original view of the film creators upon history; original understanding and interpretation of historical processes, events and phenomena, etc. Within the framework of this article, emphasis is made on the first two criteria.

scholarly journals Queering cultural memory through technology

2021 ◽  
pp. 89-110
Author(s):  
Maud Ceuterick
Keyword(s):  
Virtual Reality ◽  
Augmented Reality ◽  
Collective Memory ◽  
Cultural Memory ◽  
Media Theory ◽  
Cultural Symbols ◽  
The Subject ◽  
Queer Phenomenology ◽  
With Memory ◽  
Digital Spaces

While cinema boasts of a long history that has placed the representation and aesthetics of memory at its centre, virtual reality (VR) and augmented reality (AR) are only starting to shape their own aesthetic and narrative engagement with memory. Through the analysis of Chez Moi (Caitlin Fisher and Tony Vieira, 2014), Queerskins: Ark (Illja Szilak, 2020), and Homestay (Paisley Smith, 2018), this essay shows how cinematic AR and VR involve the viewers’ movement to produce and transform collective memory and spatial habitation. Feminist digital geographies, film and media theory, and the concept of orientation developed by Sara Ahmed in Queer Phenomenology (2006) give sense to how sound, images and viewers’ movement participate to rewrite collective memory and cultural symbols. As these artworks present personal memories of struggles to find a home within present spaces, they queer hegemonic orientations of the subject, and invite viewers to re-align body and space within ever-changing virtual and digital spaces.

Living History Museums and the Construction of the Real through Performance

2004 ◽  
Vol 45 (1) ◽  
pp. 61-74 ◽  
Author(s):  
Scott Magelssen
Keyword(s):  
Living History ◽  
Historic Sites ◽  
Public Display ◽  
The Real ◽  
The Past ◽  
History Museums ◽  
Symbolic Value ◽  
The Subject ◽  
Living History Museums ◽  
Historical Sites

The narrative fabric of modern history, writes Roland Barthes, tends to be woven with a certain amount of “useless” details, which, though they are ultimately “filling” (“catalysis”), nonetheless have “indisputable symbolic value.” As a consequence, the past two centuries have seen the “development of techniques, of works and institutions based on the incessant need to authenticate the ‘real.’” These techniques include photography, reportage, exhibitions, and, I would like to emphasize, “the tourism of monuments and historical sites”—the subject of this essay. Indeed, for the tourist, the symbolic value accorded the minutiae on display at historic sites, preserved or re-created for public display, seem to be the very elements that guarantee real history, despite the fact that many of these details are often the most conjectural elements.

scholarly journals As voces dos recordos: memoria oral, pasado traumático e novela na Galiza actual

2020 ◽  
Vol 27 ◽  
pp. 129-140
Author(s):  
Diego Rivadulla Costa
Keyword(s):  
Cultural Memory ◽  
Spanish Civil War ◽  
Interdisciplinary Approach ◽  
Point Of View ◽  
Literary Representations ◽  
The Novel ◽  
History And Memory ◽  
The Past ◽  
The Relationship ◽  
Formal Point

Voices of memories: Oral memory, traumatic past and the novel in contemporary GaliciaThe fictionalisation of the Spanish Civil War and Francoism in the Galician novel has experienced a significant evolution from a thematic and formal point of view. This evolution has been greatly influenced by the memory boom since the beginning of the 21st century, both in Galicia and the rest of Spain. Therefore, exploring the contemporary Galician narrative corpus requires an interdisciplinary approach to address not only the literary representations of history and memory, but also the functions acquired by those narratives in connection with the context as well as the cultural memory of the Galician people. This paper focuses on the relationship between memory and orality in some of these texts in order to analyse how oral memory emerges in the novel as a form of persistence of the past in current times. This oral memory becomes a key element in many of these narratives and faces a deliberate collective amnesia and the reluctance to remember, acting as a space for resistance that connects the past and present in the texts.

scholarly journals Alienation of tradition as a way of person's relationship with the past

2021 ◽  
pp. 68-81
Author(s):  
Dmitry Vladimirovich Rakhinsky ◽  
Grigorii Andreevich Illarionov ◽  
Svetlana Yurevna Piskorskaya ◽  
Aleksei Gennadevich Rusakov ◽  
Evgenii Stepanovich Shcheblyakov
Keyword(s):  
Cultural Memory ◽  
Self Determination ◽  
Intergenerational Communication ◽  
The Past ◽  
Active Subject ◽  
The Social ◽  
Interdisciplinary Synthesis ◽  
The Subject ◽  
The One

The subject of this research is the alienation of tradition as a way of relating to the past. The goal of this article consists in conceptualization of an “alienated tradition” as a mode of relationship between the social present and the social past, generated by the historical dynamics of development of the tradition, which is simultaneously a factor of social development and a source of personal suffering. The research methodology leans on the principle of social epistemology, which implies following the mutual conditionality of evolution of representations on connection between the present and the past, reflected in the concept of tradition sociocultural mechanisms of the  tradition. The article analyzes the language of interpretation of tradition as a combination of sociocultural mechanisms connecting the social present and the past. The novelty of this work consists in interdisciplinary synthesis of the concepts and research positions: the classical concept of alienation, research on intergenerational communication and cultural memory, socio-criticism studies, and theory of suffering. The alienation of tradition suggests objectification of these connections, in terms of which the social past perceived by a person as the new and communicative grounds for the alienation of tradition, emerged as result of increasing vicariousness of intergenerational communication. The alienation of tradition has a dual meaning. On the one hand, it becomes the foundation for self-determination of a person with regards to cultural continuum, force of development, due to the fact that a person is no longer positioned as a result of determinacy by the past, but an active subject who transforms the world relying on own mind, rather than the legacy of the past. On the other hand, the alienation of tradition becomes a cause of suffering; the more vicarious becomes the person’s relationship with the past, the more antagonistic and alienated become the grounds for his existence in culture that are determined by the past.

scholarly journals Queering Cultural Memory Through Technology: Transitional Spaces in AR and VR

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Maud Ceuterick
Keyword(s):  
Virtual Reality ◽  
Augmented Reality ◽  
Collective Memory ◽  
Cultural Memory ◽  
Media Theory ◽  
Cultural Symbols ◽  
Transitional Spaces ◽  
The Subject ◽  
Queer Phenomenology ◽  
With Memory

While cinema boasts of a long history that has placed the representation and aesthetics of memory at its center, virtual reality (VR) and augmented reality (AR) are only starting to shape their own aesthetic and narrative engagement with memory. Through the analysis of Chez Moi (Caitlin Fisher and Tony Vieira, 2014), Queerskins: Ark (Illja Szilak, 2020), and Homestay (Paisley Smith, 2018), this essay shows how cinematic AR and VR involve the viewers’ movement to produce and transform collective memory and spatial habitation. Feminist digital geographies, film and media theory, and the concept of orientation developed by Sara Ahmed in Queer Phenomenology give sense to how sound, images and viewers’ movement participate in rewriting collective memory and cultural symbols. As these artworks present personal memories of struggles to find a home within present spaces, they queer hegemonic orientations of the subject, and invite viewers to realign body and space within ever-changing virtual and digital spaces.

Forgery in the Chancery? Bishop Anno at Worms

2021 ◽  
pp. 21-60
Author(s):  
Levi Roach
Keyword(s):  
Cultural Memory ◽  
Military Service ◽  
Corporate Identity ◽  
Local Identity ◽  
The Past ◽  
The Subject ◽  
Louis The Pious ◽  
Do So

This chapter discusses the forgeries of Bishop Anno at Worms. The main texts comprised by the Worms forgeries have long been known. But new light is shed on the subject by a privilege of Louis the Pious of 814, which has only recently been the subject of scholarly scrutiny. The diploma in question confirms Worms's immunity and grants its dependents partial exemption from military service — they are only to serve in cases of need, and then are to do so under direct episcopal oversight. Ultimately, the Worms counterfeits are a symptom of change, a sign of the bishopric's growing ambitions and developing sense of corporate identity. By producing a more useful past, Anno and his associates served the present. It was a means of situating immediate concerns at Worms, Ladenburg, and Wimpfen in relation with the past. And as ever with cultural memory, the focus was on those rights (immunity and tolls) and individuals who were most constitutive of local identity. According to the German couple Jan and Aleida Assmann, Hildibald B was involved in a process of canonization, whereby the bishopric's undifferentiated past was winnowed down to a few iconic moments.

Top-Down Processing and Visual Reorientation Illusions in a Virtual Reality Environment

2004 ◽  
Vol 63 (3) ◽  
pp. 143-149 ◽  
Author(s):  
Fred W. Mast ◽  
Charles M. Oman
Keyword(s):  
Virtual Reality ◽  
Visual Processing ◽  
Line Length ◽  
Perceptual Cues ◽  
Virtual Reality Environment ◽  
Top Down ◽  
Test Conditions ◽  
The Subject ◽  
Processing Mechanisms

The role of top-down processing on the horizontal-vertical line length illusion was examined by means of an ambiguous room with dual visual verticals. In one of the test conditions, the subjects were cued to one of the two verticals and were instructed to cognitively reassign the apparent vertical to the cued orientation. When they have mentally adjusted their perception, two lines in a plus sign configuration appeared and the subjects had to evaluate which line was longer. The results showed that the line length appeared longer when it was aligned with the direction of the vertical currently perceived by the subject. This study provides a demonstration that top-down processing influences lower level visual processing mechanisms. In another test condition, the subjects had all perceptual cues available and the influence was even stronger.

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