time to read
text by DONATIEN GRAU
donatien grau is a french writer, art critic, and a curator at the musée d’orsay in paris. a long time contributor to purple, he is the author of plato in l.a., the age of creation; and taking time, with azzedine alaïa
For a long time, we felt the brain was the center of everything, that it was fixed and was merely a container. Memory was similar to a treasure hall, where objects of the highest value — the souvenirs that make our identity — were kept. We now consider all this to be old-fashioned beliefs that have little to do with what the brain does. The brain is dynamic; information is not stored to be unearthed (Freud’s metaphor of archaeology); memories keep being reinvented all the time. Neuronal transmission is not only based on knowledge or reasoning —…