than other media.18 When the past is represented, the choice and form of media
will inevitably have an effect on the kind of memory that is created. Anecdotes
told by an older relative will have less influence on the cultural collective memory
than literature or film, where different modes of representation provoke different
modes of cultural remembering in an audience.19
The importance of premediation and memory circulation
In addition, Erll speaks of intra-medial strategies, such as the rhetoric of collec
tive memory and inter-media relations that are involved in the process of cultural
memory. The inter-medial dynamics can be split into two movements: 'remedia
tion' and 'premediation. These two movements interact. With 'remediation' Erll
refers to the constant representation in different media of a memorable event.
What one knows about this event derives from the constructed narrative that
is built around the event, in forms of photography, newspaper articles, art, etc.
Since this specific memory is represented in different media, its representation
is not tied to one specific medium, which thereafter creates a powerful site of
memory. With the term 'premediation' Erll refers to a phenomenon in which the
existing circulating media in a given society provide a set frame for remembering.
The example she provides to clarify this theory is the way in which the Second
World War is remembered, which is according to the First World War model and
thus already premeditated. Premediation thus provides a framework of cultural
practices of looking, naming and narrating. It is simultaneously the starting point
and the tool for mediatized memories.20 Erll's interpretation of cultural memory
as a returning circulation and the stress on media is of uttermost interest for the
case of Forum, since newspaper articles and the publication of the Forum book in
1994 as a retrospect, tell us something about the appreciation of the foundation.
Another interesting idea regarding cultural memory is brought up by Ann
Rigney, who argues that cultural memory can be described as 'working memory';
a memory that is constantly in motion since it is performed by individuals and
groups as they reselect narratives from the past through various media.21 The
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The Art of Remembering Forum: the Local Memory
18 Astrid Erll, Literature, Film, and the Mediality of Cultural Memor. In: Astrid Erll, Ansgar Nün-
ning, Sara B. Young (eds), Cultural Memory Studies: An International and Interdisciplinary
Handbook. Berlin/New York: De Gruyter, 2008, 389.
19 Erll, Literature, Film and the mediality of cultural memory, 392-393.
20 Erll, Literature, Film and the mediality of cultural memory, 392-393.
21 Ann Rigney, Plenitude, scarcity and the circulation of cultural memory. In: Journal of Euro
pean studies 35, no. 1 (2005), 17.
