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Busy week. I’ve started reading Annette Kuhn’s Family Secrets: Acts of Memory and Imagination (1995). It took me a while to find it, but my library finally found a used copy from a bookseller in Montreal. It is a compelling thesis. She uses a close read of family photographs to reflect on her memories of growing up in 1950s London.

Her introduction is a thoughtful read on the theories of memory work and the difference between “those who comment on the production of culture and those who do the producing”.

She writes: “Memory work makes it possible to explore connections between’public’ historical events, structures of feeling, family dramas, relations of class, national identity and gender, and personal memory” and even more importantly for me, she writes about the abstract qualities of how we remember: “memory it turns out, has its own modes of expression: those are characterized by the fragmentary, non-linear quality of moments recalled out of time”.

I’m trying to make sense of the urgency around planning for this Camberwell Summer 2009 exhibition. Planning seems to be moving full steam ahead with little room for any discussion reflecting on the purpose. I tried asking some questions last week, but have had little response. I’ll try to follow up more this week.