madly awake
COLLECTING MEMORY


Published July 2023
 Like the shelves of a library, our bodies contain a complex and intangible repository of memories. Invisible to those outside of the experiencee’s subconscious, these memories often find their corporeality through our tendency to accumulate resonant objects: photographs, letters, postcards, books, shells, travel tickets – the list could go on. Collecting Memory is a publication that explores this relationship between object and memory in an investigation of what it means to archive – and remember – today. 

Editor Molly Maltman visits six artists and practitioners traversing fashion, publishing and art to enquire what they recognised as emblems of their memory. Volume (1) contains the memories of Elise By Olsen, director of the International Library of Fashion Research; Yusuf Hassan, founder of BlackMass Publishing; Dal Chodha, writer and Editor-in-chief of Archivist Addendum; John Foley, one half of organic perfumery S/JF Narrative; Sophie Eleanor Turner, artist and founder of Lore Archive; and finally, Celeste Burgoyne, the performance artist and poet whose words are weaved throughout the entirety of Collecting Memory. 

Blurring the line between individual and collective memory, truth and fiction, the publication also features a selection of archival black and white film images that were originally obtained from a house clearance. In unearthing this collection of photographs, Maltman attempted to piece together an understanding of the person behind the lens all those years ago.

Preserving the memories of its contributors, including those of the unknown photographer whose collection Maltman discovered,  Collecting Memory becomes a repository of sorts but one that isn’t necessarily fixed or final. Like the memories it contains – which in their very nature will be forgotten, remembered and forgotten once again – the publication will evolve. With each engagement, new memories are conceived.