art, science & business /lecture: Harald Welzer

On Engrams and Exograms, the Communicative Memory

Humans are able to implement their uncanny ability to adapt to changing environments because they have created a co-evolutionary environment of development and have liberated themselves from evolution’s biological guidelines. This emancipation has been made possible through two specific functions of the human memory: first through the capability of the autonoetic, one’s own conscious memory; and secondly through transferring memory to other people, institutions or the media. This lecture shows that human memory develops through communication, and that it is a lifelong communicative function that is far less individual than we are used to thinking.

Harald Welzer is Director for the Centre for Interdisciplinary Memory Research at the Science and Culture Institute in Essen, as well as a Research Professor for Social Psychology at the University of Witten/Herdecke.

With these two lectures, the art, science & business program touches on the two main themes “Image and Visualisation” and “Memory and Forgetting” upon which the program was organized since 2003.

The art, science & business program is made possible by the financial support of the State Foundation of Baden-Württenberg, the city of Stuttgart as well as the LBBW Foundation for Art and Culture.