LISA BULAWSKY Works on Paper Projects Installations About

Prosthetic Memories Dream Day Shiftland Flashbulb Memories SVP The Dilemma Game Problem Plays Harlot's Progress other work 2009 - In-progress I am still working on this suite of monoprints based on personal memories collected during interviews with older Americans (over the age of 70). Interview participants were asked for their associations in relation to four major historical events: WWII, the assasination of JFK, the Apollo 11 moon landing, and the events of September 11th. The term "prosthetic memory" comes from Alison Landsberg's research culminating in her 2004 book, Prosthetic Memory: The Transformation of American Remembrance in the Age of Mass Culture, which examines how historical events and cultural memory are assimilated as personal experience through exposure to modern technologies. I have realized through my project that these are also assimilated through simple oral culture, in this case through one-on-one sharing, during the interviews I conducted. Through this process, both the historical events and the personal experiences of the people I interviewed have become my own prosthetic memories.