Time—its ruptures, recursions, and reconfigurations—has increasingly become a central concern in contemporary memory studies. The temporal dimension of memory not only defines how the past is recalled but also determines how it is imagined, negotiated, and projected into possible futures. Across diverse cultural, artistic, and theoretical landscapes, the works discussed in this panel collectively engage with the manifold temporalities that shape remembrance—from indigenous temporal frameworks and postcolonial genealogies to the algorithmic rewriting of archives and the mediated emotions of nostalgia. Together, these contributions explore the multiplicity of temporal logics at play in the production of meaning, identity, and resistance.
Alicia Salomone’s comparative study of the Mapuche Catrileo-Carrión Community and Sámi artist Britta Marakatt-Labba highlights Indigenous epistemologies of time rooted in cyclical, relational, and non-linear modes of existence. Through textile and video works, these artists unsettle Western notions of historical progression by weaving together ancestral memories, natural rhythms, and spiritual continuity.
Temporal disruption also structures the two literary analyses presented in Leopoldo Domínguez’ study. The exploration of Jenny Erpenbeck’s Aller Tage Abend (The End of Days) and Sharon Dodua Otoo’s Adas Raum (Ada’s Room) underscores the capacity of fictional genealogies to defy linear history.
Dariusz Brzeziński´s the investigation of nostalgia as a pervasive cultural phenomenon situates the emotional experience of time within broader social and technological transformations. The paper calls for a renewed theoretical framework to grasp nostalgia’s transdisciplinary scope.
Finally, in Memory under the Archontic Influence of Generative Artificial Intelligence, Johanna Vollmeyer examines through Derrida’s notion of archontic violence and Aleida Assmann’s concept of Speichergedächtnis (storage memory) how the emergence of generative AI transforms the very infrastructure of memory by altering our relationship to the archive.
Alicia Salomone (University of Chile): Time, Memory and (de)coloniality in works by Mapuche (Chile) and Sámi (Sweden) artists: This essay draws on the multidisciplinary work by the Mapuche Catrileo Carrión Community and the textile artwork by the Sámi artivistist Britta Marakatt Labba and its goal is to develop a comparative analysis of time, temporality and memory in the pieces of these Indigenous artists from Chile and Sweden. The study’s theoretical approach is based on decolonial perspectives by authors such as Mignolo (2011), Maldonado Torres (2016), Maphosa & Makama (2024), and Shahjahan (2025). Britta Marakatt Labba (1951), born in Idivuoma (Sápmi, Sweden), is a recognised artist who has produced an extensive oeuvre through textiles, prints, installations and sculptures. In works such as Garjját (The Crows, 1981), Girddi noaiddit (Flying Shamans, 1986) and Historjá (History, 2003 2007), the artist dives into her childhood memories as part of a reindeer herding family to bring back the Sámi’s lifestyle, stories, cosmovisions, and conceptions of time and temporality. These memories are paramount to reflect on the consequences of colonialism and to provide a basis for resilience, resistance against dispossession and fights for the recognition of the Sami people’s rights and identities. The Catrileo Carrion Community was born in 2016 and now settles both in Chile and San Diego (USA). They position themselves far from Western heteropatriarchal regimes to interrogate (neo)colonial violence on Indigenous populations and territories. In the video essay Kizungünewün Epupillan (Self determination of two Spirits), they explore queer affections and (des)identifications, questioning Modern temporalities to build new human/non human communities close to the rhythms of Nature and Epupillan sensibilities integrating female and male. Through this path, they imagine new realities that go beyond submission and master slave relationships, shaping an Epupillan time linked to the Mapuche memory and and its non heterosexual practices.
Brzeziński, Dariusz (Polish Academy of Sciences): Contemporary Dimensions of Nostalgia: Towards a New Theoretical Framework: Abstract: 'Nostalgia Isn’t What It Used to Be'. Simone Signoret’s dictum perfectly reflects the thorough transformations that the idea of nostalgia has undergone over the years. From a specialist term in medical discourse, it has evolved into a concept that covers a broad semantic field and is widely used in the social sciences and humanities. Besides, along with socio-cultural changes, the expressions and forms of nostalgia have been multiplying and morphing. These developments prompted reflections on how nostalgia should be conceptualised. This process has become particularly prominent in recent decades, with the advent of the so-called nostalgic turn.
Nostalgia is one of the most important socio-cultural phenomena today. Its manifestations range from the slogan ‘Make America Great Again’ to very common marketing strategies that evoke the past, and from the increasing popularity of nostalgic films, TV series, songs and computer games to brand new AI-based technological solutions that make the digital restoration, recreation or reconstruction of the past possible.
The paper aims to discuss the need for a comprehensive, transdisciplinary analysis of the contemporary manifestations of nostalgia, and to propose a sketch of a new theoretical framework for studies on nostalgia in the current condition. The paper results of my current research project 'Contemporary Dimensions of Nostalgia: Towards a New Theoretical Framework', financed by the National Science Centre in Poland (2022-2026).
Vollmeyer, Johanna (Universidad Complutense de Madrid): Memory under the Archontic Influence of Generative Artificial Intelligence. Abstract: In my presentation, I will analyze the effects that the emergence of generative artificial intelligence (GenAI) has on the archive understood as the foundation of our global knowledge. Drawing on Jacques Derrida’s concept of archontic violence and following Luciano Floridi’s notion of a “fourth revolution,” according to which humanity is displaced from the center of the informational space, I will examine the transformations undergone by storage memory (Speichergedächtnis, in Aleida Assmann’s terminology) and, consequently, the changing modes of production, organization, and transmission of knowledge under the influence of GenAI.
The application of GenAI to the organization and retrieval of our archives implies that it no longer refers back to original sources but instead generates synthetic responses. In this way, the archive—understood both as a material repository of data and as a fundamental dimension of collective cultural memory (Speichergedächtnis)—undergoes a profound mutation: AI systems not only consult the archive but continuously rewrite it, exercising an unprecedented archontic power.
Through the analysis of artistic projects such as Exhumar la Memor.IA by Rogelio Séptimo, my presentation explores how GenAI simultaneously influences the creation of archives and reveals its own archontic violence. By generating synthetic images that make visible suppressed or marginalized memories, AI opens up spaces of symbolic resistance and enables the formation of counter-archives. However, these same practices also reproduce the exclusionary logics inherent to archival structures—particularly the epistemic hierarchy of written language over oral forms of knowledge.
Finally, I will address the question of the future of memory in light of the highly self-referential nature of GenAI, which increasingly relies on data generated by AI systems themselves—a phenomenon known as data contamination.
20260731T140020260731T1530America/Argentina/Buenos_Aires9.14. Temporal Entanglements: Rethinking Time and Temporalities in Memory StudiesSV201MSA Buenos Aires 2026buenosairesconference@memorystudiesassociation.org
