-by Justina Špeirokaitė

collective archive of women's memory

Memory is a flood, writes Ocean Vuong.[1] It is something we cannot easily control as it is already controlled by different triggers. Except in cases when our memory blocks some, usually traumatic, experiences, everything else can surge at certain moments. Both good memories, which can provide inner comfort and warmth, and bad memories, from which we'd like to hide, seem to overwhelm us. There are also second-hand memories. What I mean is that these memories are not about our own experiences and life events but of other people. The people who share with us what they remember, their stories become intertwined with our own memories. Sometimes, they don't even have to tell us anything. The memories of the lives of our family members from the previous generation are called post-memory. According to literary scholar Marianne Hirsch, Postmemory describes the relationship that the "generation after" bears to the personal, collective, and cultural trauma of those who came before — to experiences they "remember" only by means of the stories, images, and behaviors among which they grew up. But these experiences were transmitted to them so deeply and affectively as to seem to constitute memories in their own right.[2] Although the generation after is the closest to experiences of transgenerational transmission, we also retain memories of more distant generations. Scientists are debating whether there is any difference in memory performance based on biological sex. I believe we all possess our memories and have individual abilities to preserve and maintain them, depending on many factors influencing each person's life. So, the question here isn't about who can remember better but whose memories are given importance. Women and other marginalized identities do not share historical memories equally, nor even family memories. They are not equally represented in history books or other literature. Our obsession with learning everything about humankind focuses mostly on white, non-disabled heterosexual men. It has been this way for many years, and even though the world has changed significantly, it remains so in many ways.

Autobiography as a literary genre has been popular since the 18th century, its content being the author's life story or some parts thereof. The most enduring autobiographies and memoirs are those written by men. There are several reasons for this: women didn't have the same opportunities for education and thus learning how to write, and even if they did, what they wrote wasn't taken seriously or considered of high literary significance. However, women have always told stories, sharing their life experiences in their diaries, songs, and even fairy tales. They conversed with other women, passing on their knowledge and experiences to their daughters, who in turn passed it on to their own offspring. This unwritten memory is carried within us, shaping us and giving us meaning. One may argue that these ordinary women never asked to be remembered, and yet they are. This inevitability stems from the bond we share with each other.

And there, memory is a flood, it's water, it's fluid. If Derrida, the father of deconstruction, suggests that because the text is independent of the author's original meaning and is available to an infinitude of interpretative possibilities[3], then I'd say that certain memories, whether one's own or second-hand, are also independent of the real-time event they originated from.

When my grandmother was still alive, I repeatedly asked her to tell me stories about the war, about her boyfriends, about how she lived back then when she was young. I don't know if the stories about the war my grandmother would tell are accurate. But I know that is how it happened to her. I wrote it down in an autoethnographic way, the way I experienced life-changing epiphanies and mundane aesthetic moments[4] while listening to her, as it became a part of my memory about her, long before we met.

As I continue, I think and write about my grandmother long after she passed away. Ocean Vuong dedicated a book to his mother while she was still alive. He wrote his book as if it were a long letter to her, telling stories about her, her sister, her mom, and her son. The title of the book is the same name I borrowed for this archive – On Earth We're Briefly Gorgeous. To me, it signifies the combination of fragility and temporality, scale, and strength. For me, it describes herstory.

I created this collective archive without a focus on geography, time, or topic for a reason. There are countless untold stories that could vanish. Yet, there are also many stories already collected. Often, they reflect the current interests of the documenting researcher. I want storytellers to choose what they wish to share, what is important to them, rather than to me. The intention here is to reject linearity in time and dissolve geographical borders, despite the factual elements in the stories. These facts contribute to the memory but do not necessarily dictate its importance. Thus, the interlinked stories weave together to form a fabric of sensitive, sad, happy, heavy, joyful, tragic, and wholly authentic life memories.

I’m grateful to beautiful contributors: Ale Zapata, Barbora Horská, Tahereh Nourani, Yulia Mak, Dominykas Cinauskas, Céline Struger, Rychèl Thérin.

And to people whose projects inspire me: Elmira Kakabayeva, Marija Šabanović, Apple Yi Jiang.

This archive is an ongoing project, so you’re always welcome to contribute. All information on how to do it and the archive is here.

[1] Voung O. 2019, On Earth We’re Briefly Gorgeous
[2] https://postmemory.net/
[3] Adams T. ir Manning J. 2015, “Autoethnography and Family Research”, Journal of Family Theory & Review
[4] Skott-Myhre K., Weima K. ir Gibbs H. 2012, Writing the Family

Justina Špeirokaitė is a curator and cultural organizer based in Vienna. Over the past nine years, Justina has initiated, coordinated and implemented a series of artistic, cultural and social events. In her curatorial work, she explores areas such as social inequality, political injustice and cultural identity through the influence of technology, globalization and political-cultural memory.