Memory and Diaries: a Postgraduate Memory Network Seminar

The Postgraduate Memory Network will hold its second seminar at the University of Roehampton on Tuesday 29 April between 3 and 5pm. The seminar is entitled “Memory and Diaries” and will consist of four ten-minute papers on this topic followed by a general discussion. Those who wish to present a paper are invited to send a 300-word abstract to pg.memorynetwork@gmail.com by 15 April – all are invited to attend.

The event will take place in room 204 of the Fincham building at Digby Stuart College. For more information, please visit the PGMN’s websites:

http://pgmemorynetwork.wordpress.com

https://www.facebook.com/PostGradMemoryNetwork

The image above is taken from the diaries of Clive Wearing, a British musicologist, conductor, tenor and keyboardist who suffers from chronic anterograde and retrograde amnesia. Since contracting a virus that attacked his central nervous system, he has been unable to form new memories. His diaries, begun during his recovery and carried on for over two decades, materialise the unfamiliar experience of a life lived entirely in the present tense.

Ghostsigns are memory traces, fading embodiments of the shifting operations of culture and capital across time. The remains of adverts painted by hand on brickwork, their presence on walls across the wall points to a stubborn physicality not quite overwritten by the transience of mass production. In 2006, Memory Network member and London resident Sam Roberts launched a research and publishing initiative to photograph, archive and promote awareness of ghostsigns, and to create, as the project puts it, ‘a permanent record of the existence of this important but often overlooked part of our commercial, craft and advertising history’.

In 2013 Sam began leading walking tours of Stoke Newington, where he first began to develop his obsession with these artefacts. More tours are planned in the coming months, on the dates below:

•Sunday, 11 May, 1.20pm
•Wednesday, 28 May, 6.20pm
•Sunday, 8 June, 1.20pm
•Wednesday, 25 June, 6.20pm
•Sunday, 13 July, 1.20pm
•Wednesday, 30 July, 6.20pm

The tours come to £12.50 per person and last around two hours. To book tickets, and to learn more about this project, please visit http://www.ghostsigns.co.uk/tours