recollectionsbecame

Recollectionsbecame is a transdisciplinary artistic and scholarly project and concept that investigates how recollections evolve through retelling and media mediation. The term, often written as a single word, signals the idea that memory itself becomes a new entity as it passes through narrative form and collective memory.

Origin and development: It originated in the late 2010s from a loose collaboration of writers, photographers, and cognitive scientists who sought to study memory beyond conventional memoir. Initially released as an online collaborative archive of short texts and images, the project later expanded into a published book, a series of gallery installations, and an audio program.

Format and methods: Recollectionsbecame presents prose fragments, documentary photography, and soundscapes arranged in non-linear sequences. Works are designed to be navigated by viewers or listeners, rather than read or viewed in a fixed order. The project also invites audience submissions of personal recollections, which are analyzed for patterns of distortion, reframing, and thematic emergence.

Themes and scope: Central concerns include subjectivity, time, memory’s reliability, and the interaction between memory, media, and identity. The approach emphasizes openness and interpretive doubt rather than definitive truth.

Reception and significance: Critics describe the project as experimental and interdisciplinary, aligning memory studies with creative practice. The works have been discussed in contemporary art catalogs and memory theory essays as provocations for reconsidering how recollections are formed and remembered.

Notable works (examples): a multimedia book-length edition and a traveling installation combining text projections with ambient sound.

See also: memory studies, narrative theory, false memory, collaborative art projects.