On Remembering and Forgetting
Paula Diogo, Estelle Franco, Mariana Ricardo, Masako Hattori & Sónia Baptista

Sinopsis

In the last five years of her life, my grandmother lost her faculties very rapidly. She had always been an active and independent woman and yet she gradually witnessed her body and her mind ceasing to obey her orders in the customary way. In order to force her to remember who she was, my aunt arranged a notebook in which she asked her to write down a little of her history: her name, who she was married to, where she lived and what she had experienced in life until then, where she had studied, where she was born, where she had worked, how many children, grandchildren and great grandchildren she had and all of their names, etc. I think that this might be the starting point for a show about the tasks that we invent in order to organise our memories and to force ourselves to move into an area of light.

This research into memory and forgetfulness, undertaken by five creators-actors who have come from different backgrounds and experiences, is the first chapter of a trilogy inspired by the book Les Formes de l’oubli by the anthropologist Marc Augé.

Three shows to reflect upon the way in which memories take place in our lives: what we choose to remember or forget, or what we are capable of remembering and forgetting. Out of habit or conditioning, for the purposes of self-preservation or by accident. We are our memories. And if our memories are nothing more than a product of our imagination (as André Breton said), then what are we after all?

Paula Diogo

(On remembering and forgetting will be followed by two other shows: The autumn season with Paula Diogo and Alexander Kelly and Landscape with Paula Diogo and Tónan Quito).