Marcel Proust

As the idea of 'memory', the struggles of perfect recollection and collective memory, have been an inspiration for my practice I decided to do some reading into memory itself. While I have been reading about memory mainly from a psychological and scientific point of view, I decided to read Marcel Proust's novel In Search of Lost Time, to get a more philosophical scope on the subject. Proust coined the term 'involuntary memory' in Swann's Way (Vol I In Search of Lost Time). Proust distinguished between voluntary and involuntary memory; voluntary referred to a person consciously trying to recollect a past memory, whereas an involuntary memory is when a sensory experience might trigger a memory. Familiar smells and tastes might take us back to our childhood without us actively trying to recall that memory. For example, the taste of children's sweets or smell/texture of plasticine. Within the novel there are several occurrences in which a sensory experience triggers a memory for Proust. The most famous of which is when the taste of a madeleine cake invokes a memory of his childhood:

No sooner had the warm liquid mixed with the crumbs touched my palate than a shudder ran through me and I stopped, intent upon the extraordinary thing that was happening to me. An exquisite pleasure had invaded my senses, something isolated, detached, with no suggestion of its origin. And at once the vicissitudes of life had become indifferent to me, its disasters innocuous, its brevity illusory – this new sensation having had on me the effect which love has of filling me with a precious essence; or rather this essence was not in me it was me. ... Whence did it come? What did it mean? How could I seize and apprehend it? ... And suddenly the memory revealed itself.

(Marcel Proust, In Search of Lost Time: Swann's Way).


If I am interested in the idea of collective memory I need to think about how I can trigger a memory for a viewer. There is a difference between a viewer seeing my work and consciously trying to recall similar memories, which would be a 'voluntary' memory, or whether the memory is triggered for them by familiar imagery, smells and sounds etc ('involuntary' memory). At the moment I want to continue concentrating on solely imagery in evoking memories for the viewer. I need to get better accomplished at the techniques I am currently using before I can think about introducing more performative aspects to my work.