Preserving the collective memory and re-creating identity through animation.

Since the beginning of history storytelling has been the medium to convey ideas, express feelings and pass information from one generation to another. Stories, lessons encrypted as powerful metaphors found in the Norse or Greek myths; past experiences or futuristic visions printed on textiles, such as the Kené of The Shipibos from Peru; images drawn or painted in the walls of Altamira, ceramic vases, sculptures, we can find all kind of crafts present in our lifes as containers of great ancient knowledge of different cultural identities and memories.
At the Animated Learning Lab, we use visual storytelling as a means to reflect on the re-construction of the identity through animation; understanding the self, as our identity, our history. It’s about how we see our own story; everything starts with perception (Beau Lotto, 2013).

Currently it’s not very common to conceive animation as a communication media of biographies. Nevertheless, features as Drawn from Memory (1995, Paul Fierlinger), Waltz with Bashir (2008, Ari Folman), It’s Such a Beautiful Day (2012, Don Hertzfeldt), Wrinkles (2012, Ignacio Ferreras) o Rocks in my Pockets (2014, Signe Baumane), are clear samples of the treatment of the autobiographic memory and documentary through animation techniques.

When we produce an animated film, we can appreciate how the creation of characters and scenarios are transformed into visual metaphors, making possible the re-creation of past moments or the simulation of possible ones. We experience, thanks to the imagination and complex cognitive processes, new virtual situations, which help us to reflect upon thoughts, feelings and actions, which will build our best movie: the illusion of life, our ecstatic truth.

“Our memory is our coherence, our reason, our action, our feelings. Without it, we’re nothing” (Buñuel, 1982, p.7)
Animation for its power of abstraction and playfulness, results a very attractive and effective media to explore different perspectives and work the neuroplasticity, facilitator of the physical changes of our brain to keep learning and evolving. We learn by listening, watching and creating stories, real or fiction, they are individual and collective memories: visual testimonies, legacies of artistic, historical, educative and therapeutical values, which can be preserved through the animation cinema as re-creations of our own identity, part of the big consciousness of humanity.