Call for proposals - After Memory: Shifting Perceptions of Time and Temporality in the Digital Condition

^{Special collection ed. by Lisa Deml, Victor Fancelli Capdevila, Nathalia Lavigne and Bruno Moreschi.}

We invite contributions for a special collection of the journal Memory, Mind & Media (MMM) that explores the evolving timescapes of memory.

Titled After Memory: Shifting Perceptions of Time and Temporality in the Digital Condition, this issue seeks to examine how practices of remembering and forgetting are being transformed by information overload, algorithmic narratives, ephemeral archives, and networked patterns of consumption and interaction—and what these transformations mean for how we engage with the past, live in the present, and imagine potential futures. Beyond established theories and hegemonic perspectives, we particularly encourage contributions that examine alternative, marginalised, speculative, and practice-based approaches to the dynamics shaping memory.

Temporal fragmentation is not a new phenomenon, but the operations of the internet complex have intensified this experience (Crary, 2022). The sense of disorientation and disassociation became particularly acute during the Covid-19 pandemic, when the immersive nature of screen-based interaction became our default mode of perception in a hyperemployment condition (Quaranta, 2020). The blurring of temporal boundaries is fuelled by the broader dynamics of time-space compression driven by capitalist expansion (Harvey, 2012). As a result, our perceptions of time and temporality have shifted and transformed the logic of memory from within (Ernst, 2017). Trapped, as we are, in a perpetual present, it is harder to apprehend what has passed and to imagine what is yet to come. Memory, by its very nature, exists only a posteriori. It draws what has passed and what is past into the present tense. As such, remembering constitutes an act of temporal destabilisation—and even more so in the current digital condition. With the increasing dominance of digital technologies, we are exposed not only to a multiplicity of temporalities converging in one and the same moment, but also to a sense that time is a matter of technical (re)production. Embedded in large-scale, high-speed online data environments, present events are rapidly rendered instant pasts—stored on digital platforms and repurposed as information resources for machine learning models. No longer a neutral backdrop or reliable foundation, time and temporality have become dynamic subjects in their own rights.

Against this background, we are interested in examining how perceptions of time and temporality have shifted in the digital condition and how they affect practices of remembering and forgetting. Considering that most of our interactions today are online, reverberating in algorithmic filter bubbles and appropriated by tech companies, how can memories act as relational (Campbell, 2003) and connective (Hoskins, 2011) tissues? As temporal differences dissolve in information technologies, how can we respond individually and collectively to the shapelessness of the present and foster a shared historical consciousness (Berlant, 2011)? Configured around the extraction of data, how does the dissolution of temporal boundaries serve new colonial ventures (Couldry & Mejias, 2019)? Rather than being “stuck on the platform” (Lovink, 2022), how do other conceptions of temporality, beyond the confines of hegemony and chronology, extend across temporal genres? From spiral time (Martins, [2021] 2025) to non-anthropocentric time (Krenak, 2020), how do they play out in practices of remembering and forgetting? What subversive potential does a perpetual present as a process of emergence (Williams, 1977) hold? And what role do queer, feminist and transfeminist practices (Egaña, 2018) and anti-imperial, indigenous, and Black movements (Azoulay, 2019; Nakamura, 2024; Sutherland, 2023) play in this dynamic?

To address these urgent questions, we are particularly interested in submissions that engage with:

• Non-hegemonic understandings of temporality and temporal organisation;
• The role of affect in perceiving and organising time
• Experimental archival practices and their relation to and role in activist practices;
• The memory boom and its affective and cognitive after-effects;
• Subjective experiences of histories and autobiographical turning points in the digital age;
• Distributed memory, collectivised digital memory and digitised collective memory;
• Our ongoing state of hyperemployment;
• Media archaeology and “forgotten” technologies of memory;
• The role of institutions, platforms, and individuals in shaping memory;
• Algorithmic and automated remembrance;
• Creative and speculative approaches to memory;
• Translations of key texts on digital memory into English, preferably by authors from the Global Majority;
• Critical reports of collective experiences with digital memory (workshops, exhibitions, projects, etc.);
• Pedagogical and educational initiatives promoting archival literacy and digital tools for archiving and remembering.

Let us explore, together, what lies after memory.

Submission Guidelines: We welcome theoretical, empirical, speculative and practice-based contributions with interdisciplinary and transdisciplinary perspectives. Please send an abstract (250-350 words) in English stating the medium of the contribution (written, visual, sonic, etc.), author(s), and affiliation(s) (institutional or independent) to opencall@aftermemory.net

Deadline for abstract proposals: 15th December 2025, 11:59 pm, Anywhere on Earth (AoE).

Decisions regarding abstract proposals will be communicated to authors in January 2026. Invited full manuscript submissions will begin on 1st April 2026, and continue until the Special Collection concludes.

This special collection builds on the transdisciplinary project After Memory that launched with a symposium at ZKM | Center for Art and Media Karlsruhe and Karlsruhe University of Arts and Design on 23–26 October, 2024. More information at: www.aftermemory.net

The peer-reviewed journal Memory, Mind & Media explores the impact of media and technology on individual, social and cultural remembering and forgetting. The pervasiveness, complexity, and immediacy of digital media, communication networks, and archives are transforming what memory is and what memory does, changing the relationship between memory in the head and memory in the wild. This agenda-setting journal fosters high-quality, interdisciplinary conversations combining cognitive, social and cultural approaches to the study of memory in the digital era. To ensure a widely accessible forum for cutting edge work, it insists on jargon-free English submissions and is published online and Open Access. A fee waiver system is in place for unfunded authors. More information at: www.cambridge.org/core/journals/memory-mind-and-media