Good Morning teachers and students, my name is Lala Smith, and I’d like to share and address to you my own personal understanding as both a composer and responder, of history, memory and their representations. Standing here before you, I will elaborate further into the relationship of both factors and explore the plethora of challenges that the linkage presents with the inclusion of two examples. It’s true what they say you know… there are three sides to a story… history, memory and the truth.
Due to the fact that we are traditionally and culturally led to believe that history is, at its best, an unbiased account of truth and the past, we as people determine it as inflexible and objective collection of documented accounts and evidence. Represented as evidential sources that are reliable, history has however been challenged and questioned, as it is now a result of choice and preconceived outcomes. History records the big events; memory fills in the spaces and tells us, what the event was like. Granting personal perspectives that may possibly be a flawed interpretation of events, memory is evidence that can be distorted by emotions, influenced by suggestion and interpreted differently in terms of context. Triggered by small incidents, waves of sounds or connected to physical objects, memory is a process that can be recalled and kept in mind. Amongst the many texts that significantly display and contribute to increasing the difficulties in distinguishing the two, the American Smithsonian 9/11 Website & the Sydney Jewish Museum is relevantly the most intriguing.
Exhibiting, memorialising and remembering the victims who perished in result of the tragic and emotionally charged events that affected the world, both the website and museum evoke and emerge emotional