Memory Activism. Plasticity of Digital Sculptures

Abstract

Memory culture, aesthetic resistance, and reconstruction – these are critical topics explored by various contemporary sculptural positions. Referring mainly to the (digital) sculptures of Juan Covelli’s Speculative Treasures (2020-2022) but also to Nora Al-Badri’s Babylonian Vision (2020) and Morehshin Allahyari’s Material Speculation: ISIS (2015-2016), this paper deals with the technological and artistic potential of restoring and reinterpreting collective social and cultural memories within a meta(speculative)- archaeological framework. These works oscillate between cultural, translocated heritage, colonial history, and algorithm-based art in the post-digital era, claiming the digital space as a decolonial space. I propose an extended concept of plasticity, which encompasses both computer-supported, screen-based and thus coded and imagined plasticity, as well as haptic plasticity experienced via 3D printing, thereby enabling the memorial aspect of digital sculptures. Neuronal, algorithmic, and sculptural plasticity generate memory in different ways. Speculation is here considered as an artistic strategy, complemented by speculative fabulation (SF) in the sense articulated by Donna Haraway. Drawing on Wüstenberg and Gutman’s concept of memory activism as an artistic mobilization or strategy, which might be more precisely termed “memory artivism”, the paper further elaborates on memory as both a means and an end, being in constant flux such as mirrored in the aesthetics of digital morphing.