ABSTRACT
Anthropologists doing research on memory mostly consider in which social and political contexts the past is selectively referred to as meaningful. Actors also explore memories, but they must be able to recall sensations, such as sunshine or pain, on stage and find out how they correspond to emotions and thoughts. Therefore, acting teachers such as Walter Lott, suggest sense memory exercises. Neuroscientific findings elucidate why these exercises allow insights into experiences that are difficult to access. Sensory stimuli often trigger flashbacks for traumatized people. The sense-memory approach is a controlled triggering of memory. When students learn it, they attentively explore an object of daily use, such as their coffee cup. It seems boring, but then they have to put the cup out of sight, recreate it and mostly wonder if they have ever seen or touched it before. They learn, bit by bit, to recall its weight and the wafting smell of coffee. This arouses their sensual attention in the daily routine and stirs up the remembrance of emotions in complex situations. Such exercises offer an access to sensory and emotional memory; they are an education of attention that is suitable for anthropological research and teaching.
