How to write your own history
Have you ever considered to write an #autobiography? I didn´t – but I wrote it without thinking much about it. Read this article on how you can become your personal historian.
Like most of us, I keep mementos and store them provided that I find some space. Since my parents didn´t force me to take my personal stuff out of their home when I began my studies I kept most of the souvenirs of my childhood at their place. In fact, even afterwards I stored stuff I couldn´t keep at my parents when I moved from one flat to another. It usually ended up in some brown box in the attic. Those boxes grew over years and it was sort of a running gag that I planned to organize it when I visited my parents cause I never really did. Guess what, the day came and I finally took the time to go through all these boxes and encounter my past.
As Aleida Assmann writes, there are two types of memory: storage memory and functional memory. Storage memory is a general archive items that are formally organized. Functional memory contains only a small selection of the items in the archive, brought to a specific order and meant to communicate a specific message. Assmann compares the relation between storage memory and functional memory to the archive and the exhibition space of a museum: The exhibition hall only features a small ammount of the pieces found in the archive. The exhibition focuses on some elements and cut out others. There are mechanisms of selection and exclusions, there are curatorial decisions and, of course, a permanent lack of space. Assmann here refers to cultures of remembrance, but if you think about it twice it may as well be about cleaning up your mess from a houndred years ago.
What did I actually do when going through my mementos? Basically I did three things:
1. Looking through stuff 2. Selecting stuff 3. Organizing stuff
Interestingly, this are not only the main mechanisms in politics of remembrance but also of writing a (hi)story. The work I did can tgerefore also be understood as writing my biography – though without having the intention to publish it. Yet there are two important differences between a common autobiography and the autobiography we create when administrating our personal belongings:
Firstly, a common autobiography is mostly linear and completed in some sense. The collection of mementos is rather chaotic and first and foremost unfinished: when we look at it we know that we may not keep a great part of it the next time or at least keep it in a different way. That is to me the great charm of this type of autobiography: they keep a hint of flexibility and the chance for future explorations. It is therefore good to have not only well organized narratives but also space to rummage for new stories.
Secondly, we already write plain, readable and mostly linear narratives e.g. in diaries and photo albums. But those formats have usually the great disadvantage that they are strictly 2D. It is often hard to combine objects and narrative. However, unique objects play an important part in telling history, not only in museums. We can organize memories in written text but most 3D objects don´t fit into an album.
In the end (that is after hours behind piles of mementos and future garbage), I came to the conclusion that a combination of boxes and folders would be the best solution to write my personal history. Alas I wasn´t really satisfied with the outcome: Some boxes were too big, some to small, some were just too far away from stuff that I put into a folder. Given this situation I came up with an idea that I am planning to build as soon as I find some time: the Memox. It´s a kind of box museum that provides enough space to organize things AND keep them shuffled. I´ll see how much it will cost me and then you can place your orders
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