The long, and sometimes quite unfruitful, dispute that is taking place at the moment regarding historical memory, intends to finish a dispute which was started at the end of the 70s in the academic world by people such as Hayden White and the Annales school, who questioned the hegemonic notion of history and the idea of the one and only memory. In addition, feminism instanced the articulation of a consistent critique of the idea of an exclusive memory, looking to integrate the voices of those who had previously lacked the legitimacy to contribute to the construction of History with a capital H, into the dominant discourses.

On many occasions, personal histories do no coincide with the official accounts of history. The fact that memories that we might have kept, might be able to lead established systems of representation into a crisis, is a potential problem for those who need a justification for the present based on one only and closed past. This piece by Jaime Vallaure and Daniela Musicco is therefore extremely interesting, as it introduces us to the memory of someone who, anonymously and involuntarily, shares with us moments of his life, fragments of his past, and images that his brain has unwittingly decided to preserve.

In this video the main character looks on as both his past and his present surrender and are forced to coexist. His present moment is permeated by a past time that is at times confusing and distant, but nevertheless latent. Here, memory is not even just a discourse, it is the reality in which we live, despite the fact that, on occasions, we might be forced to give it up or to forget it.