Carnegie Event | The Elephant of Revolutionary Forgetfulness: The Art of Commemoration

The Elephant of Revolutionary Forgetfulness: The Art of Commemoration

A public talk with Louise Lowe of Anú Productions. So Why Remember? Theatre, across all cultures, is inherently tied to notions of liveness and repetition, offering an embodied experience of place and memory. It evokes a sense of return, of revisiting and re-enacting moments, making the relationship between theatre and cultural memory both profound and multifaceted.

The phrase “Lest we forget” is commonly used in war commemorations. It warns, of history repeating mistakes, of the human cost to those who experienced it and of what they endured. ‘Lest we forget’ is a profound statement and an important one, but how do we not forget that which we didn’t even remember? I believe that art holds the capacity not just to show what happened, but to ask us to witness and to question how we might understand. By fostering conditions for collaborative engagement between audience and performer in a shared kinesthetic state, we aim to create sensory-rich experiences. In these environments, layers of history can intersect, clash, and interact, tumbling through environments that are both dream-like and hyper-real, to ask real questions of identity, politic and citizenship.