NL
MORE INFO
Films in this programme

#095 Digital Amnesia

An exploration on how new technologies and social media affect our memories.

“Parce que leur mémoire est courte, les hommes accumulent d’innombrables pense-bêtes.” – Toute la mémoire du monde, Alain Resnais

[Because their memory is short, men accumulate innumerable reminders.] 

Human beings are obsessive self-archivists. We have a short-span memory but we want to remember as much as possible. In the past decade, more information has been recorded than in all centuries that came before and data has become the oil of the 21st century. We are obsessively documenting and digitally storing our personal memories as well: social media and smart data-mining apps became our traditional archives. But in the process of storing everything digitally, including our personal memories, are we forgetting to remember? “We can scroll back on our timelines forever but what gets lost if the process of remembering is no longer based on creative reconstruction but on the click-and-play of digital data?” Are we losing our ability to remember without images? 

The program “Digital Amnesia” explores the relationship between memory and technology, from old archives and libraries up to social media induced memories. Since data is also vulnerable, are we putting too much faith in our “digital memories”? Will digital technologies be able to keep perfect accounts of the past? Are we storing too many memories and creating digital clutter?

This programme was created by Montse Pujol Sola as part of her Internship in 2021

Films in this programme

Toute la mémoire du monde
Alain Resnais
(1956, 22 min)
This film would serve to talk about our collective memory in contraposition of our personal memory and to reflect on what all these...
The Back Steps
Leighton Pierce
(2001, 6 min)
One may think that technology would allow us to go back to a specific time (memory) in a perfectly documented way, but even with...
Every (Movie, Sound, Image, Text) On My Cell Phone
Darrin Martin
(2009, 8:00 mins)
Another example of how our memories can blur together if we mix up, with no particular order or selection. The result is quite curious:...
You, the world and I
Jon Rafman
(2010, 6 min)
The difficulty (or impossibility) to remember someone when we don’t have images of them and how vulnerable these images are (they can...
Nero
Emma Verhoeven
(2018, 5 min)
This film explores the (re)construction of memories in a digital age. Who was Nero and how do we remember him? What do we remember from...
Deep down tidal
Tabita Rezaire
(2017, 19 min)
This program rounds up with this film which reflects on electronic or digital colonialism: “Electronic colonialism seeks to influence...
Website by HOAX Amsterdam