My present is more than I remember
(2025)
author(s): Clara Sharell
published in: Research Catalogue
"My present is more than I remember" explores the entanglements of word and image and their role in constructing memory and identity. Drawing on my four-year practice at the KABK, it analyses the methods I’ve developed and examines the interrelation between memory, photography, and writing. Delving into personal memories and intergenerational connections within my family, I seek to understand how inherited experiences and stories shape my personal and artistic identity, guided by the act of weaving as a concept and a material.
Furthermore, the paper examines the existential role of collective and familial memory in shaping Jewish and German-Jewish identity. Using a range of texts and styles, including sociological and art-historical theories, experimental diary entries, poems, and personal anecdotes, I explore the parallels between the construction of memory and the construction of photographs. Just as photography can never represent the essence of a person, memory will never be able to represent the full truth of the past.
Longing for the past: A research paper on how the lens-based depiction of the 1980s music industry shaped the collective memory of that decade
(2025)
author(s): Magali Sarah Roxane Speicher
published in: Royal Academy of Art, The Hague
Thesis of the Royal Academy of Art, The Hague, 2023
BA Photography
Longing for the past
A research paper on how the lens-based depiction of the 1980s music industry shaped the collective memory of that decade
By analysing how the camera captured the Western music industry of the 1980s, the research paper Longing for the past examines how that decade is collectively perceived nowadays. The goal is to understand what aspects of the ‘80s we remember and how these depictions are translated and read decades later. Along the way, this paper seeks to determine why the ‘80s are having a comeback in contemporary pop culture; therefore, it also inquires into trend cycles, the romanticisation of the past and how correctly it can be recreated.
Through historical research, especially on the music industry and photography of the ‘60s and the ‘70s, the musicians’ urgency and its visualisation in the 1980s are first put into context. Further, technological innovations, such as the rise of MTV (Music Television) and the music video, as well as the power of cover art and, ultimately, its fall, are dissected. By subsequently looking at political and sociocultural motivations of ‘80s music, this research paper investigates how far these can be translated accurately as this very art is brought back to the mainstream decades later. The findings within this research conclude that the modern image of the 1980s is a massive scam on our memory and, therewith, on contemporary mainstream culture.
What made a comeback is not the ‘80s style per se, but an illusion, initially genuinely crafted by nostalgic artists and, ultimately, cleverly tailored by companies to serve their products to the masses with an ‘old but desirable’-stamp. This retro-marketing, paired with the phenomenon of Retrieval- induced forgetting and social dilemmas, provides a lucrative platform for escapism and results in the meaning behind 1980s music being deducted. People tend to forget that the lens-based depiction of the ‘80s music industry was never meant to serve as pure documentation.
Resonating Voices - Waves of Sound and Spirit in a Palestinian Musician's Quest for Identity and Freedom
(last edited: 2025)
author(s): Shafeeq Alsadi
This exposition is in progress and its share status is: visible to all.
This thesis emerges as an exploration of the multifaceted nature of music, identity, and the enduring spirit of a people living through profound challenges. Based on autoethnographic reflection, it provides an introspective exploration of how sound becomes a vessel for presence, a mirror for resilience, and a space for transformation. Through music, this inquiry seeks not merely to articulate personal narratives but to connect them with the common pulse of a collective memory—a memory that is influenced by the persistent realities of displacement and the yearning for freedom that Palestinians, no matter where they are in the world, experience.
At the heart of this research lie three case studies that illuminate the potential of music: Sonic Exile, where traditional Arabic modalities and experimental soundscapes dissolve into a single, resonating voice; Echoes from Bethlehem, an improvisational encounter with Palestinian Nay master Faris Ishaq that brings forth a meditative state of being wholly present in sound and spirit; and the work of the Amwaj Choir, where human voice rises above cultural and physical confines, embodying a living, enduring presence.
The findings suggest that music is not a static act but a living practice—an unfolding dialogue between tradition and innovation, self and other, silence and sound. Improvisation, as a way of being, becomes a method of both reflection and resistance, enabling a deeper connection to the present moment while engaging with the complexity of the past.
The research reveals music’s profound capacity to heal, to resist, and to imagine new pathways for freedom and belonging. Rather than offering definitive conclusions, this thesis extends invitations: to listen, to witness, and to remain open to the spaces where sound and silence meet, where identity and memory evolve, and where the human spirit, despite all, continues to create and endure.