In 1953, the Dutch-American artist Willem de Kooning agreed to give his fellow artist, Robert Rauschenberg, a drawing to erase. Rauschenberg worked on the drawing for over a month using a variety of erasers. Despite all efforts, traces of the original drawing remained. In 2010, digital imaging revealed much of the original drawing. This act of erasure symbolises attempts to erase histories, whether individual or collective.

India-born neuroscientist Charan Ranganath finds that, within 20 minutes, people forget 40 percent of what they learn and, after a few days, only 20 percent is remembered. Since the past is over, why should we remember? It helps in making sense of the present and making better choices for the future.

Daniel Kahneman, psychologist and author of Thinking Fast and Slow, says memories are all we get to keep from our experience of living. In reality, memory is selective and may be far from accurate. Some memories are preserved in diaries and letters, or in autobiographies, but even the most meticulous accounts are from a personal perspective. Siblings remember their shared childhood differently. Ranganath suggests memory is less like a photograph and more like a painting, what British psychologist Frederic Bartlett calls an imaginative reconstruction.

What of consciously erasing the past? A........

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