Educational Resources
Why Now?
Unlike previous generations, members of GenX across all races and classes are trying to look at their pasts consciously to avoid revisiting those traumas on future generations.
In my interviews with scientists, I learned that memory is the tool and the roadmap for this process. Memory Reconsolidation shows us that each time we recall a memory it is malleable: After it is recalled it has to be re-stored back into long term memory AS A NEW MEMORY.
For people who struggle with trauma, the past is continually interrupting their present, making it difficult to live their lives and build relationships. Science tells us that we can alter the grip of painful memories by creating new associations to replace the old ones. While we will not all experience PTSD, all of us have known what it is to have a past experience dictate our present.
The frontier of healing will be through the reconceptualizing of the act of remembering, an experience that we hold as deeply private and individual. See Memory breaks us out of our isolated experiences.
See Memory demonstrates that memory is the building block of identity. We create the story of who we are through a merging of our experiences, our imaginations and the absorption of other people's stories and, in fact, there is no way, neurologically, to decipher between imagined memory and experienced memory.
Through storytelling and a distinctive painterly cinematic language, See Memory proposes that we can choose how we use our memories and what meaning we give to them, rather than simply reacting to them or feeling a victim of them.
What we remember and how we remember determines our ability to dream up our futures. This new perspective on memory is life-altering.
Additional Links
Transgenerational trauma and repetition in the body: The groove of the wound
History is repeating itself, Holocaust survivors warn before March of the Living
Descendants of Holocaust Survivors Have Altered Stress Hormones
What PTSD teaches us about both human frailty and resilience.
FAQ
What is cross generational PTSD?
It is the epigenetic inheritance of trauma from parent to child
What is memory consolidation?
It is how we initially process and stabilize our memories.
What is Viviane’s process in the hand-made paintings?
She creates the paintings and captures each moment as they evolve
What did neuropsychologist Brenda Milner discover about memory from patient “HM?”
Milner found that there were two systems of memory, episodic and procedural memory
Where did Viviane film her interview with Brenda Milner?
The Montreal Neurological Institute
How many painting stills were being created by Viviane for the See Memory Animation?
Approximately 30,000
What film used neuroscientist Joseph Ledoux and Karim Nader’s discoveries about memory reconsolidation as the basis for its premise?
The Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind