Jim Walker
University for the Creative Arts
Specters of the Past: Illustrating generational heritage and cultural memory
Panel: Voice
The following paper considers how the visual language of illustration has been co-opted as a medium and communicative form, that encapsulates the visualisation and narration of the past. In turn becoming a material artefact and process that enables the dissemination of cultural heritage, facilitating the generation of collective and generational memory. As Schwartz suggests collective memory acts “as a means for the preservation of cultural forms as well as information” which enables us to study how it functions as “a model of society” and “a model for society (Schwartz 2010:620). We can therefore consider how objects instigate acts of memory/remembering. As Assmann argues, “things do not “have” a memory of their own, but they may remind us, may trigger our memory, because they carry memories which we have invested into them…” (2008:111)
Apaydin suggests that “…the meanings and values ascribed to heritage and the memories that are developed from it become a significant symbol for collective identity; they can thus serve to keep groups and communities together.” (2020:3) Representations of historical sites such as Stonehenge evidence shifting perceptions, understandings, knowledge, and symbolic readings, through the aesthetical, stylistic, visual language of the artist. Understanding these readings is interwoven by the modes of dissemination, reproduction and creative mediums used. Early visual representations of the site have in turn become cultural artefacts forever intertwined with the ancient landscape. Harrison argues that “[I]f conserved traces can behave as mnemonics, so can the spectres of their absence.” (Harrison cited Holtorf 2020:280). It is argued that illustration oscillates between the spectral and physical by embedding ancestorial memory to geographical sites and images as evidenced in the work of Fred Lynch. The buildings, ruins, and locations where ancestors lived are re-evoked through the act of drawing, stitching together the invisible architectural structures gesture by gesture. Siting lost family memories to a place that could not be embodied through photography. In the absence of photographic records, visual representations of sites and artefacts of heritage and culture are equally important communicators and interlocutors for the facilitation of collective memory.
Jim Walker teaches visual theory on the illustration course at the University for the Creative Arts. He is an Associate Editor for the Journal of Illustration and a member of CONFIA's Scientific Committee. He previously managed the Animation Archive at UCA and curated the first major retrospective of British animator Bob Godfrey (2019). His research interests include areas of propaganda, visual culture, memory studies, terror and trauma, visual narrative, documentary/reportage and animation.